Wasting in Desire
G.K. Chesterton once famously said that the mind is to truth what the mouth is to food. We need to close them around something solid, and nourishing. Today on Holy Thursday, the Church in most of the world is experiencing a situation which is distressing: for weeks now, most Christians have not been able to partake of the Sacraments, of which the Eucharist is supreme. The Church as it were is walking in a desert of deprivation. Quarantine is understandably stressful to people. How important it is, especially now, to reach out to those we know are lonely and vulnerable.
Yet, what is lost in so much of this distress is the fact that, according to the great spiritual writers, deep and holy longings are a preparatory grace for even greater graces to come. For some writers in our tradition, the very purpose of prayer is to stir up ‘holy desire’, because it is that holy desire that is the tinder for the Holy Spirit to set aflame.
To draw a conclusion of G.K. Chesterton’s words quoted above, hunger is meant to impel us to something we need. It is very easy, when a person is distracted, to recognize when true needs are being neglected. We usually only know when we have a true need when things get truly dire, or when things begin to collapse. How many people have decided to turn their lives around when their bodies begin to break down because of lifestyle habits which were years in the making. Relationships flourish or wither usually based upon the accumulation of good or bad experiences. Unless we are attentive, some good things slip through our fingers before we ever appreciated them when they were here.
As I mentioned in my previous essay Back to Basics, the situation in which most people find themselves is comparable to a forced retreat. For the first time perhaps ever, we are confined with our friends, family, or in some cases, we find ourselves alone. There are lessons for each of us, according to the situation in which we find ourselves.
As the Paschal Triduum is now imminent, the sense of deprivation among pious Christians is reaching a peak. In order to address this, I would like to make a small contribution. Many Priests have been addressing the importance of things like Spiritual Communion, Acts of Contrition, and other Interior Acts which are meant to orient the soul and the mind toward God, especially when the externals are so absent. In a sense, God in his providence veiled the images and externals of the Church not in the Fifth Week of Lent, but much earlier. Spiritual Communion, Acts of Contrition, and also things like Acts of Faith, Hope and Charity bring us grace (as all prayer said rightly brings grace), but they all have a secondary purpose, which is that they are meant to increase our holy desires. That is, their purpose is not to satisfy our desire, but to make us more hungry. Why? Because just like natural hunger sharpens our instinct to acquire physical nourishment (ask anyone who fasts how they can smell almost anything!), so too these acts are meant to sharpen our savor for the Sacraments and the things of heaven. This is one reason why pious Christians used to receive Holy Communion so infrequently, or why the Easter Duty is a precept in the Church.
In my opinion, rather than driving us to disappointment or despair, I think many of us living in this state of spiritual hunger and deprivation ought to see this as presaging a great outpouring of God’s grace upon us. As the spiritual writers also remind us, when God wishes above all to bestow us a grace, he places in our heart a great desire for it. This is the basis even of a vocation to the Priesthood or to Marriage: something about the life becomes a sine qua non without which “you” would not be “you”.
As we join ourselves to the mystery of the next few days, perhaps we can especially join ourselves to the Blessed Virgin and to Mary in the garden, who waited in hope, waiting to see the one their hearts desired. Although not recorded in Scripture, we know that Mary awaited the Resurrection of her Son with the luminosity of faith; how great must have been her joy, to see the reward of her humble trust! In this time when it seems that so many of the signs and symbols of our faith are in quarantine as well as us, we know that this state of affairs will not endure: God will tear down the veils and restore us again, and we will once again sing our joyous “Alleluia”.
But until then, the lesson of holy desire, and its need for increase, must never be forgotten. If there is anything we learn from our spiritual quarantine, it is that. Manna only rained from heaven when the people of Israel cried out to God in their near starvation. May our spiritual hunger pangs become a living prayer to the God of Hosts, and the Living Bread come down from Heaven.
A Blessed Paschal Triduum to everyone.
