Our Desires
1. Most people are always longing for something. Those who are poor
yearn to be rich. Those who are in bad health and are not resigned are
longing to be cured. Those who have plenty of money and good health, but
misuse these gifts to satisfy their lower urges in the hope of finding
happiness, find instead only emptiness and remorse. Those who covet
honours and fame are restless when they
see their colleagues succeeding while they themselves remain on the
bottom rung of the ladder. On the other hand, those who reach the summit
of their profession and believe that they have fulfilled their purpose
in life, soon discover that the easy chair in which they hoped to settle
down is padded with thorns. The glory which they have won is an empty
thing, the object of the envy or of the contempt of others. So we are
all yearning and sighing and cannot find peace. Our hearts cannot be at
rest in this world. “Here we have no permanent city,” says St. Paul,
“but we seek for the city that is to come.” (Heb. 13:14) St. Augustine
has summed up the reason for our continual longing. "You have made us
for Yourself, O God, and our hearts will never rest until they find rest
in You." (Confessions I, 1:1)
2. Our desires may be vain or
culpable or meritorious. It is useless to long for the impossible or to
base our desires on motives contrary to Christian resignation. Happiness
cannot be found on earth, so it is futile to look for it here. It is
much better to suppress these vain desires and to convert them into a
longing for God and for our own perfection. Some desires are
blameworthy, for they spring from an immoderate attachment to worldly
things, such as wealth or honours or even sin. These desires are always
sinful and can be seriously so when they are deliberately directed
towards evil objects. Finally, however, there are desires which are good
and reasonable. Even Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane prayed earnestly
to His heavenly Father to take away from Him, if possible, the bitter
chalice of the Passion. But He added immediately: “Yet not my will but
thine be done.” (Luke 22:42) When He was hanging from the cross on
Calvary, feeling crushed beneath the weight of our sins and utterly
abandoned, He cried out in an agony of yearning: “My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me?” (Mt. 27:46) Nevertheless, He accepted with
perfect self-surrender and obedience all His sufferings, even His
mysterious abandonment by His heavenly Father. The Saints followed the
example of Jesus. Their lives were as full of longing as they were of
suffering. But just as they offered their sufferings to God with
generous hearts, so they offered Him their desires as a prayer of
supplication. The prophet David yearned for mercy and forgiveness and
his longing was expressed for all time in the psalm Miserere. St. Teresa
longed to suffer and to die for the love of Jesus. When St. Paul was
labouring and praying for the salvation of his fellow-men, he desired
“to depart and to be with Christ, a lot by far the better.” (Cf. Phil.
1:23)
3. What desires have we? Are they all directed towards
holiness and towards Jesus? Or are they all for useless worldly things?
In times of physical or spiritual affliction do we make sure that our
desires are in conformity with and subject to the will of God? Let us
examine ourselves seriously. If we find that any of our desires are vain
or sinful, let us change this state of affairs at once. Let us make God
the object of all the longing in our hearts. Let us ask Him always for
those virtues which are really necessary for us, especially for an
increase in our love for Him and in our readiness to do His will.
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