By Elizabeth Anderson, Crisis Magazine - Like the Japanese saints, we should not allow despair or discouragement to take hold in our souls simply because this desert is miserable, or our situation harder than we’d choose. A dear friend sent me this reminder (after I confessed that I was very crabby about all things coronavirus), from the 2017 March Magnificat Meditation, by Father Tadeusz Dajczer: “The desert is not a dwelling place; it is only a path, a road on which one comes to know the merciful love of God. Everyone who seeks God must pass through it since the experience of the desert is closely related to the deepening of our faith in his mercy.”