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The Longing for God

The longing for God.  The deepest desire in man.  We long for Him because we were made for Him.  When He made us, our souls experienced His love, experienced His gaze, His loving caress. We knew we were loved, and we perceived for a moment that was outside of space and time, ourselves, in His loving gaze.  We experienced that creative moment, and in a mysterious way, we remember.  And for the rest of our lives we seek to re-experience, remember, relive and return to, that moment of pure grace.  If we let ourselves feel it fully, we suffer.  We suffer from the lack, the emptiness, the void created by remembering the fullness we once felt.  It never goes away, it can't… and it shouldn't, since it is the driving force of our life existence.  We suffer so much from it that often we try to ignore it, or fill it with something else, or someone else.  What creature can replace the creator?  What love can we feel here on earth that can make us forget?  How many times do we have to obtain a temporary satisfaction to quell the dissatisfaction?  Yet this suffering is our greatest good.  What would happen to us if we stopped suffering in this way?  We would, without question, stop seeking God.  If we are satisfied, why seek for more?

The Prayer That Never Ceases

"He who eats of me will hunger still, he who drinks of me will thirst for more."  The insatiableness of  this longing in our heart is the prayer that never ceases.  And it is this prayer that God answers in drawing us closer to Him and increasing our union with Him.  It is this prayer that draws us ever closer, imperceptibly.  In fact the closer we become to Him the farther we feel He is from us, because the hunger grows, and deeper do we feel His absence.  Joy comes from perceiving His presence, sorrow from His perceived absence.  Even though, as our union with Him increases, we become more sensitive to His presence within us, we also become so to the lack.  May we never dull this pain.  May we never lose this grace of suffering the sorrow that comes from seeing, with the eyes of our souls, the Love we don't fully possess.  And may we never stop looking, nor think we've found it in a person who is not divine.

One Thing the devil Doesn't Want Us to Suffer

It seems to me to be the one thing the devil doesn't want us to suffer.  There are sufferings that make us feel so bad, we tend to forget God or get mad at Him or not trust Him or want to give up or despair.  But this one makes us remember Him and seek Him with hope and expectation, with faith and a yearning, that quickly becomes a fire so passionate that we can't help but believe He is attainable and begin to pray those prayers we pray only in those moments: Lord I give everything to You, do with me what you will… I'll do anything You ask… just give me Yourself… unite me totally to You… just fulfill the desire You put in me… consummate the wedding of our souls…

Holy Obsession

So He, knowing our true good, gives us a taste of Himself, a glimpse of heaven; ah, the sheer grace!  And if we are fortunate enough to not associate the lack, this deprivation we feel, with some abuse or abandonment, it becomes our holy obsession, the only suffering that is truly natural to our souls.

May He increase in us this suffering, and answer the longing of our souls.  Amen

Br. Mariamartin de la Cruz  S.D.B.V.   General Steward

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