In John’s Gospel 1:35-38 two of John the Baptist’s disciples start to follow after Jesus. When Jesus senses that they are behind him he turns around quickly and says to them, and I am paraphrasing a bit, “So tell me what you want, what you really, really want?”. Notice Jesus does not ask them what they know or what they believe, but what they want. At this point, Jesus is not so much interested in the cognitive contents of their minds but in getting them to articulate the desires of their hearts.
Is there a difference between what we “want” and what we “really, really want”? At a social level we have imitative wants, or desires. Desires to be successful, to be seen as being ‘fashionable’ or ‘cool’, to be part of the political ‘in-crowd’. These every day desires are caught and are spread like viruses. That is how advertising works. Living totally within this level of desire makes us surface dwellers, susceptible to the storms created by every new social virus that appears on the horizon, where our individual vessels are disconcertingly tossed about, on what can be pretty rough waves. In this sea state, Jesus comes to us and offers to enter our boats bringing with him, that mysterious gift of, “what we really, really want”, the fulfilment of our deep desires.
Our surface desires highlight, in us, a kind of neediness, a sense of lack or deficiency and our deep desires can reveal a gnawing emptiness in our lives. Consider two young children playing in a nursery. The red ball in the corner has sat there for the past half hour but as soon as one child goes over to play with it the other child immediately wants it and starts crying for it. Our desires are triggered by the virus of what some other person has, and we do not have. This is true at a deeper level as well. We observe some music or sports star who has success, fame, and adulation, all the things that we do not have. They become an idol for us. At one level we want some of their ‘stuff’ so we buy their album or, at an auction, bid on their personal hockey stick but at deeper level what we really, really want to share in their ‘being’, for they appear to have a fullness of actuality that we don’t have.
Is there another possible use for our desires? Drawing on Jesus’ theme from Matthew 5:17 where he says, “I have come not to destroy but to fulfil.”, could Jesus make use of our surface desires as a portal to gain access to our deep desires? In trying to satisfy our desires purely by ‘acquiring’ some thing or status or in the understanding some concept will have some success, but our deep desires are fulfilled through the ‘gift’ of relationship. It is only in a mutual relationship that love is made manifest. At the Mass we discover that God, in His love for us, desires our deepest fulfilment, our salvation.
Colossians 2:9 says, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in bodily form.” At the Eucharist Christ offers to board our vessel, not with some token of Himself, but bringing with him that mysterious gift of His actual “being”, which is the true fulfilment of all desire. We just have to welcome Him on board.
Authors
Adele's Photography
