Desire For God
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One
Importance of the Desire for God
Only if we long for God will we seek Him, will we find Him. So, desire for God is the engine of salvation, we have to desire the Lord. That’s why St. Augustine says that “The whole life of a good Christian is a holy desire,” (treatise of I John 4:6).
But what if you just don’t feel a desire for God? If desire for God is supposed to be the engine that drives your life, how do you get that desire?
This is why God has given us an imagination. Our desires or feelings are stimulated by our imaginations, that means what we see, or hear, or imagine to ourselves we desire. And fortunately for us, God became man and showed himself to us.
Now we know what God looks like: He looks like Jesus Christ. And thinking about Jesus Christ in His humanity as we see it in the Gospels, is a crucial method to growing in desire for Christ. But that also means if we never read or think about and imagine Jesus in the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, then we probably won’t desire or seek him.
So, how much time do you spend reading, thinking, and imagining about Jesus from the Gospels?
Not very much? Then let’s make a change.
Two
St. Teresa says, “While we live as human beings, it is very important to us to keep Christ’s humanity before us” (Autobiography, 157).
Reading, thinking, and imagining Jesus in the Gospel, reflecting on His life, His actions, teachings, and suffering, fosters a deeper desire for him.
For Teresa, Jesus’ humanity is the bridge to His divinity. By starting with meditation on His human experiences, we gradually come to understand and connect with His divine nature. Teresa believed that by imagining Jesus’ humanity, especially His sufferings and sacrifice, we encounter God’s immense love for us. This realization can be transformative, deepening one’s love for God and inspiring a desire to respond to that love through prayer and action.
Teresa offered a practical approach to prayer that begins with reading and thinking about Jesus in the Gospels.
My first spiritual director required that I spend 30 minutes every day reading the life of Jesus and then another 30 minutes thinking about it. That was one of the best things I could have ever done.
She also recommends using images of Christ that make us inclined towards Him, “It is then a wonderful comfort to see an image of One whom we have so much reason to love. Wherever I turn my eyes, I would want to see his image. With what better or more pleasing thing can our eyes be occupied than with One who loves so much and who has in himself all goods?” (Way of Perfection, ch. 34, 11).
Three
The Inadequacy of Imagination
The imagination is powerful but it is limited.
God is pure Spirit, He is altogether spiritual. No part of the divine nature is accessible to sight, hearing, taste, touch, or smell. But if we can’t form a sense image of God, then that means God is unimaginable. It means “eye has not heard, and ear has not seen,” just as St. Paul says.
But how can you long for what you haven’t seen, haven’t tasted?
If you’ve never tasted honey, you can’t really work up a desire for honey. If you’ve never experienced the divine, how can you work up a desire to be united to God?
The only way for that to happen is if God grants you the grace of experiencing Him directly in a way that goes beyond sensory images; beyond imagination altogether.
Four
The human intellect likewise has limitations
God is also way beyond the reach of our intellect.
Intellect is more powerful than imagination. You can conceive of things you can’t imagine.
As the philosopher Descartes pointed out, you can’t imagine a hundred-sided shape (just try it – my imagination poops out pretty much after an octagon). But you can understand and comprehend what it would mean for something to be a hundred-sided figure.
Our intellects are stronger than imagination because intellects don’t use just images, but ideas, which can capture and comprehend the essences of finite, limited things. That’s why we can understand what a hundred-sided shape would be. Because even though that’s a lot of sides, it’s still a finite concept. But God is infinite. You can’t capture Him with a concept. You can’t comprehend Him at all.
So, again, how can we possibly love what we can’t understand? How can we desire God when God is utterly beyond the capacity of intellect and imagination?
Five
Need for the Mystical Knowledge and Desire for God
Daily meditation on the life and teaching of Jesus, using our imagination and intellect is a great help in growing in a desire for God. But, since God goes beyond the intellect and imagination, the only way we can really develop a true desire for God is if He gives it.
And the way He gives us that desire is by giving us an experience of Himself, one which St. John of the Cross says “is a touch of divinity in the soul, without any intellectual or imaginative form or figure” (Living Flame, Stanza 2, #8).
When you get an actual, experience of God, then you really long for Him. In this way, God “can inflame the will with a touch of the warmth of his love, even though the intellect does not understand, just as a person can feel warmth from a fire without seeing it” (Living Flame, Stanza 3, #49; cf. Spiritual Canticle, Stanza 26, #8).
So how do we get ready for the experience of God?
Since it is a gift only God can give, we need to ask Him for it. Don’t be shy. “Ask and you shall receive,” He said. And then…receive Him as often as you can in the Eucharist. Be faithful to daily mental prayer and a resolution in the Rosary and beyond. Remove any occasions that lead to sin. Do your ordinary duties for love of God. Accept all trials and suffering as from the hands of God
If you quit, begin again because Teresa of Avila said, “I am certain that all who do not stop on the way will drink this living water” of union with God!