The Spiritual Meaning of the Desert in Dostoyevsky's The Grand Inquisitor

The moment we abandon ourselves to God, we realize that we have never been abandoned.

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The “terrible and wise spirit” from Dostoyevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor once conversed with Jesus in the wilderness and tried to convince him of three things:

1. to give people bread;

2. to give them a predictable miracle;

3. to become their external authority.

Jesus rejected all three. The same terrible and wise spirit now comes to each one of us today…