In joining John the Baptist, whom the religious apparatchiks considered a heretic and a rebel, Jesus had a spiritual experience that gave him boundless confidence. Such was this confidence that from that moment on he did not shy away from any risk in order to announce the good news he carried within him. He showed this well when he left the Jordan region: instead of taking the road back to Galilee, he went alone into the desert to spend more than a month there without eating or drinking. JESUS HAD ANOTHER VERY RISKY ENCOUNTER Your baptism, dear Jesus, didn't take away your propensity for risk. on the contrary. At the time of leaving for your native Galilee, you had the desire to make a detour through the desert. You knew that for a person alone the desert was not a very safe place, but you could not help it; the desert was attracting you like a magnet. In the distant past, it was in the desert that your ancestors, as soon as they had