Job 19: 21-27
Job said:
Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends,
for the hand of God has touched me!
Why do you, like God, pursue me,
never satisfied with my flesh?
“O that my words were written down!
O that they were inscribed in a book!
O that with an iron pen and with lead
they were engraved on a rock forever!
For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;
and after my skin has been thus destroyed,
then in my flesh I shall see God,
whom I shall see on my side,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
My heart faints within me!
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
Our Heart’s Desire
“Mom, can I have…?”
“Mom, I want…”
Sometimes, I joke that my children are bottomless pits of desire.
Then, I remember that I am, too.
It is reasonable to be suspicious of desire. Within a consumerist culture, influencers and multinational corporations have much to gain from manipulating our desires. We may have internalized religious teaching that makes us wary of wanting, fearful that doing so is selfish or may lead to envy, lust, or greed. Desires can be fickle, shallow, and misdirected. They can also move us to care, create, and act.
Today we remember St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus who directed her whole life toward her desire for union with Christ. The author of Job states “my inmost being is consumed with longing.” The Ignatian tradition helps us to notice, name, and sift through conflicting desires to identify and choose that which deepens our relationship with the One who desires us.
As we pray today, we follow St. Ignatius’s repeated encouragement - to ask for what we desire.
—Lauren Hackman-Brooks is a spiritual director, retreat facilitator and writer who currently serves as the director of mission formation for the Jesuit Schools Network of North America.
Prayer
The goal of our life is to live with God forever. God, who loves us, gave us life. Our own response of love allows God's life to flow into us without limit.
All the things in this world are gifts of God, presented to us so that we can know God more easily and make a return of love more readily.
As a result, we appreciate and use all these gifts of God insofar as they help us develop as loving persons. But if any of these gifts become the center of our lives, they displace God and so hinder our growth toward our goal.
In everyday life, then, we must hold ourselves in balance before all of these created gifts insofar as we have a choice and are not bound by some obligation. We should not fix our desires on health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or short one. For everything has the potential of calling forth in us a deeper response to our life in God.
Our only desire and our one choice should be this: I want and I choose what better leads to the deepening of God’s life in me.
—First Principle and Foundation of the Spiritual Exercises as paraphrased by David L. Fleming, SJ