Burning with desire

GIVEN our notorious tendency to fall into spiritual

lukewarmness and complacency, if not coldness, we need to often exert

conscious effort to burn with desire and to light up our fire to love

God and everybody else. We cannot deny that we often are good only at

the beginning of an activity but peter out later on. We need to be

guarded against this tendency.

            This is actually what is proper and ideal for us. We are

meant for this condition of being fervent in our desire as long as it

is properly motivated and oriented, and also as long as we use our

faculties properly, that is, without abusing and stretching them too

much. Yes, a certain restraint and moderation is also needed here.

Let’s always give due attention to the limitations of our bodily

dimension.

            This burning desire should start in our mind and heart, in

our spiritual powers before it is manifested in our senses and our

bodily parts. Of course, our senses and bodily organs, once properly

animated, can also help in sustaining the ardor in our spiritual

faculties. Hopefully, we can keep a mutually perpetuating cycle of our

bodily and spiritual faculties in the service of desire out of love.

            In this, we should be inspired by the example of that

woman with haemorrhages who, out of fervent desire, struggled to touch

the cloak of Christ despite the thick crowd. (cfr. Mk 5,21-43), or of

Mary Magdalene who, in spite of the difficulties, visited the tomb of

Christ in haste. There are actually many characters in the gospel who

manifested this burning desire to see Christ in spite of all odds.

            We can cite the example of the paralytic who was brought

by his friends to see Christ. Since they could not get close to him

due to the crowd, they went up to the roof, bore a hole there and

lowered the paralytic until he was right before Christ. Christ was so

impressed by their burning desire that the healing that was asked was

given pronto. (cfr. Mk 2,1-12)

            Or that blind man, Bartimaeus, who in spite of his

condition, could not be restrained by those around him as he shouted

to get the attention of Christ. Again, Christ was impressed by the

fervor of his faith. (cfr. Mk 10,46-52)

            Since in our piety there are things that we do often and

regularly, like praying, going to Mass, etc., we need to see to it

that our desire to show genuine love for God and others through these

acts is maintained. We cannot deny that if we are not careful, we can

easily fall into routine, and before we know it, we can appear to be

more dead than alive when doing these acts of piety.

            What can help is to repeat many times during the day many

small acts of faith, hope and charity, in the form of spontaneous

aspirations and ejaculatory prayers. They can serve as little twigs to

maintain the waning embers of our piety if not to fan that dying piety

into a bursting fire.

            Of particular interest is our desire to receive Christ in

communion, which practically constitutes the summit of our love for

him here on earth. We can formulate some acts of spiritual communion

to keep that desire burning and to prepare us adequately to receive

him in actual communion.

            We really need to be always in this state of burning

desire in spite of the condition of our body. As said earlier, it is

first of all a matter of exercising our spiritual faculties to ask for

the grace of fervent love. Let us hope that we know how to do this. We

can only expect many good things that can come from this, in spite of

the varying conditions and situations in our life, many of them, quite

adverse to our spiritual health.