Great desires reflect God’s desires for me

Few things motivate others as desires do. Desires relate to human wishes and needs and may range from hope and deep longings to craving, appetites, not to mention lust and passion.

To be able to touch your deepest desires requires interior silence and solitude

Nothing is more human than to desire; perhaps nothing is more fragile and yet as powerful as our desires. It is difficult to imagine someone without desires. They are silent projects, sensitive presence, passive activity; they can create and also destroy.

To desire is to crave for something, to want things to happen, to aspire for higher ideals. Take some time to spontaneously write down a short list of your desires right now. Of course, this is an exercise that is never fully concluded; it remains open-ended.

From the list, can you choose and stay a while with the great desires in this your present phase of life? Deep desires go further than just having this or that thing now, doing this or that better work, or being more accepted by others. This is because deep down, great desires reflect personal identity. They symbolise who you are and what you really stand for. They tend to be vocational.

For Christians striving to follow Jesus seriously, great desires respond to God’s grace. They come from your deep levels of self. To be able to touch some of your deepest desires requires interior silence and solitude – two conditions seldom available in our busy daily schedule of work and rest.

When this occurs, spiritual peace is experienced. It is as if everything in our lives remains the same way and at the same time everything changes. A new interior way of seeing and living takes hold of us at least for a short time.

These deep desires become symbols, mirrors, ways of discovering God’s desires for me, now, in my present stage of life. Perhaps there is no better answer to the question of how to discover God’s desires for me, than to search for my present, great, deep desires.

My personal relationship with the Lord helps me discover that my deep desires reflect God’s desires for me, God’s graces. They act as God-given gifts to serve better, to be less self-centred, and to take the Lord’s call in my daily life more seriously.

A mature Christian life grows in consciousness of how the Lord works with us and in us. Only we can discover and read our intense desires. They facilitate orientation and give vitality to our daily projects and apostolic commitments.

Through our prayer experience – especially if lived as a life of prayer finding God in all our endeavours – a person grows in detecting desires that point to God’s desires for me. Greater freedom and energy are experienced then, even amid difficulties and sad occurrences. We are not far from a deeper sense of life.

Lent is the privileged time to be in touch with our great internal yearnings, where the Lord is rediscovered and accompanied. It is not fortuitous that during these coming days the Church remembers and celebrates the lives of St Joseph on Tuesday and Mary in her sufferings on Friday, both so intimately related with Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.

In preparation for the culmination of the Paschal Mystery, we pass through Palm Sunday, feasting with Jesus the humble Servant, who can fulfil our most authentic aspirations and spiritual thirst. As if in a dream, we live this as if all is already done; and everything is happening here and now. Soon we will learn and interiorise that there is more to our salvation history than we have ever thought.

The truth is that to die and to live, go together. Great desires imply difficult sacrifices to be made. It is Christian life in the Lord Jesus. “Anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” (Mk 8, 35)

edward.merciecasj@gmail.com

Fr Eddie Mercieca is a member of the Society of Jesus.