22 July 2020 - increase our desire

Today's Readings

(Audio)

“They have taken the Lord from the tomb,
and we don’t know where they put him.”

We are made for God. There is nothing else that will ultimately satisfy us. But we sometimes find ourselves in a situation like Mary Magdalene. We can't find the LORD. There is only the tomb, the sorrow, the need for something which we cannot find. Maybe we implicitly acknowledge that this need is for Jesus. But we are usually quick to move on and try to forget and dull the pain. We don't often sit with it in the way that Mary did.

Mary stayed outside the tomb weeping.

Mary's desire to see the LORD was a holy desire. It was a genuinely good thing in its own right. The stronger the expression of that desire the better. Jesus taught that the one he perseveres to the end will be saved (see Matthew 24:13). Perseverance in this sense has more to do with a flawless succession of righteous deeds and more to do with cultivating the desire we see expressed so beautifully in Mary Magdalene.

I sought him but I did not find him.
I will rise then and go about the city;
in the streets and crossings I will seek
Him whom my heart loves.

Jesus taught us to seek and keep seeking, to ask and keep asking, to knock and keep knocking (see Matthew 7:7). It is in this persistence that we receive, that we find, and that the door is opened. Just as the woman desires justice so much that she won't leave the unjust judge alone (see Luke 18:1-9) so too should we be relentless in our desire for the one who himself is both justice and mercy.

I had hardly left them
when I found him whom my heart loves.

It is our desire for Jesus that can pull us beyond our old modes of understanding, of regarding the world according to the flesh, and reveal the new creation to us. The answer to this desire is profoundly individual and fulfills our longings so exhaustively as to open our eyes to supernatural faith.

Jesus said to her, “Mary!”
She turned and said to him in Hebrew,
“Rabbouni,” which means Teacher.

The holy desire we have is itself a gift from God. It allows us to hang on in the face of situations which we don't understand and which are almost impossible to bear. It calls to mind Thomas Merton's statement about prayer.

“Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and the heart has turned to stone.”

Even the heart of stone can persist precisely by this desire that it not be stone, that the stone of the tomb not be the final word. It is as we experience the beginnings of the fulfillment of this desire that we begin to walk in a personal relationship with Jesus. It is his answer, not in the abstract, but to each of us by name, that makes us witnesses to the resurrection.

“I have seen the Lord,”

Lord, Enkindle Me

So Bless the Lord