Increasing Our Desire for God
A Greater Desire for God
I want you to continue to respond to call of Mary to pray the Rosary every day. Through the Rosary the Holy Spirit and Mary will form Jesus within you. The Rosary is the School of Mary. The Rosary is also the greatest weapon to overcome evil and bring peace to our families and the world. Mary is the one who crushes the head of Satan and she will do so in our lives by the Rosary. At the same time I want to encourage you to deepen your friendship with God by spending more time with him in prayer; talking to him from the heart, listening to him by reading the Word of God and just being quiet and still with him. What prevents us from spending more time with Jesus in friendship are the 1000s of desires and worries that vie for time and attention. What overcomes these 1000s is a greater desire for God. John of the Cross, in his Living Flame of Love 3:26, says the desire for God is the preparation for union with Him. The questions is: how do we increase our desire for God? The first way is very simple: ask for it. God please give me a greater desire for you. I want to desire you above all things.
Starving Bad Desires
The desire you feed will grow. The desire you starve will die. If you feed your desire for God, then it will grow and this desire will lead you to a deep and profound union with Him. If you feed your desire for things of this world, this desire will lead you to seek happiness in things that can never satisfy and you will grow increasingly hungry and empty and nothing will satisfy you as you journey further and further away from God.
Stop feeding bad desires; feed good desires less; feed your desire for God more.
We all have bad desires, disordered desires - we desire good things in a way that begin to control us and become addictions. The roots of these are pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony and lust. Think honestly about the desires that drive your life. Identity them. The desire to win; the desire to be wanted by your spouse or kids; the desire for safety, stability or security; the desire for entertainment, tasty food, the desire to feel good, to look good, to be the best. The desire to achieve great things. Any of these good desires can become disordered and prevent us from union with God and perfect happiness. Stop feeding the bad desires and they will begin to starve and die off. How? All these disordered desires are addictions we don’t seem able to break – well recognize your inability to change them, admit you are powerless over them, immediately turn to Jesus, then take these disordered desires to confession and he will begin to set us free.
Am I Perfectly Happy
Stop feeding bad desires but we also need to feed Good desires less. The desire for sleep, food, drink, exercise, family, friends, achievement, knowledge, beauty etc. are good desires. But if one good desire begins to exclude other good things we need and especially if it is stronger than our desire for God then it is an obstacle. So feed these less and they will shrink in power. How do I identify which desires are disordered or out of balance? Ask yourself – am I perfectly happy? What is it in my life that prevents my happiness? What is the cause? The cause will point to a disordered desire.
Go to the Sacrament
Feed your desire for God and it will grow.
Receive Jesus as often as you can in the Eucharist. The Eucharist is God, the consuming fire of love. The more you receive Him the more you will be inflamed with a desire for God. Fire sets other things on fire. God, in the Eucharist is a consuming fire of love. My experience is that when I go to daily Mass, I desire Jesus in the Eucharist more. My desire grows.
Spend more time with Jesus in prayer. Proximity causes intimacy; while absence makes the heart go wander. The more we spend time with God the more we want him and the less we desire sin.
Go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation at least once a month. Sin separates us from God and diminishes our desire for him. Confession unites us every more closely to God.
Stirred Up Into the Divine Love
Other things you can do to increase your desire for God:
See God behind all good things on earth: the meal you just ate, the beautiful sunset, the mountains, the beauty of the human person, a good conversation with a friend – if these are beautiful and good it is because God is their source. If these things are good and beautiful and pleasureful, then God is infinitely more so. This leads us to desire Him more than these. Everything true, good and beautiful comes from God and points to Him and it should all remind us of him – it is all a reminder of the astonishing goodness of God and recognizing this should cause us to desire him more. St. Bonaventure testifies that St. Francis was stirred to desire for God by all created things recognizing God as the source: That he might by all things be stirred up unto the divine love, he triumphed in all the works of the Lord’s hands, and through the sight of their joy was uplifted unto their life-giving cause and origin. He beheld in fair things Him Who is the most fair, and, through the traces of Himself that He hath imprinted on His creatures, he everywhere followed on to reach the Beloved, making of all things a ladder for himself whereby he might ascend to lay hold on Him Who is the altogether lovely.