WHAT IS YOUR HUNGER? What is it for which you thirst? Let us be honest, be real with ourselves even if we feel ashamed as though it is a disorder…

We must bring it to Jesus! Present it to Jesus in full light and truth. Share openly and vulnerably with Him; for this He longs to have with us.
And we will see that layers of our superficial and disordered longings begin to peel away, till we find at the core our true self, our deepest and truest longing which is for love – to be deeply known and loved by another to the core of who we are.

For this, my dear friends, is the deepest hunger and thirst that we all have – and with which we have all been created. Why?

Imagine a magnet – created to be drawn to and attached to metal. We are all created to be drawn to and attached to the love for which we were created. – Love Divine.

MANY THINGS we can feel drawn and attached to other than this love. They may have hints or even facets of this Love, but never on their own can they truly satisfy us.

Do we feel a restlessness or discontent, a desire for something more? If we take time to be really honest with ourselves, we cannot answer anything other than “yes.” … Unless, that is, we have already found the “pearl of great price” and sold everything else to buy it.

“My soul is not at rest until it rests in You my God!” St. Augustine prayed. “You were within and I was all the while looking outside.”

Yes, the answer to our hunger and thirst comes from within. It comes first from a true surrendering of our hearts and lives to our Creator; and then from allowing His redeeming, healing, consoling love to enter in.

Jesus died that we “might have life, and have it to the full” (Jn 10:10). He gives us the living waters of His love to quench our thirst, as He tells us, “whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (Jn 4:13).

His life-giving Spirit is the “water” for which we thirst; His true presence in the Eucharist is the “living bread” for which we hunger.

He truly fills and satisfies the deepest longings of our hearts if we but become like the woman at the well and ask, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst!” (Jn 4:15). And this we must do daily.

And then, we will be responding to Isaiah’s plea, “Oh, that you may suck fully of the milk of comfort” (Is 66:10). We will be saying with the psalmist, “As a weaned child in its mother’s arms, so my soul rests in you my God” (131:2).

“When you see this your hearts will rejoice and your bodies flourish like the grass” (Is 66:14).

“Nuptials, I tell you, nuptials,” Archbishop Sheen exclaimed as to what was taking place between Jesus and Mary at the foot of the cross.

“When Christ’s heart is pierced Mary’s is also, and thus we have the definitive revelation of the union of hearts,” -John Paul II

Mary is our model. This is truly the calling for all of us as Christians… to enter into a “profound mutual abiding” (John Paul II) with Jesus, beginning in this life, and to continue on for all eternity. If it doesn’t happen in this life, it will have to in the next if we’re going to Heaven. (Purgatory prepares us, helps us to “make room” for God to be the center and source of all that we are. “Abide in me as I abide in you!”)

As I spent time in prayer recently, I was crying out to God – sharing with Him my deep ache and longing for communion. “If you are my Bridegroom, Jesus, why do I feel disconnected from you?… I long to be fully alive!… Fully expressive of heart with another, a ‘total self-gift’ to another, and receptive to that gift of the other as well…And, I am called to be fulfilled in this way with you, Jesus!”

I had entered into the first Glorious mystery of the Rosary… the Resurrection of Jesus, and found myself encountering our risen Lord, sharing all of this with Him. He became very present to me and placed His hand on my heart, being present to my heart… caressing my heart. He was communing with my heart and I was letting my heart be exposed before Him.

As my heart became exposed, He then took me to Himself and held me to His heart. Our hearts were fully exposed to one another and not only touching but experiencing a sort of intercourse.

All that I am and all that’s within me began to surface and to be surrendered to Jesus as I became a self-gift. I was experiencing the concept, “Man fully finds himself through a sincere gift of self”(Vat. II, Gadium Et Spes).

+Oh Jesus forgive me for the ways I am half-hearted in giving myself fully to you in the totality of who I am as a human person.+
 

WE HAVE ALL BEEN CREATED WITH A DEEP AND PROFOUND LONGING FOR INTIMACY and communion with another. Some are just not in touch with it. And, oh, isn’t it an amazing thing when we discover that, not only is Jesus truly alive and in our midst, but He longs for this communion even more than we do.

“Abide in me and I in you…I am the vine, you are the branches…Live on in my love…Behold I am with you always until the end of time…I am the living Bread come down from Heaven… Unless you eat my Body and Drink my Blood, you have no life within you!”

———————————————————————–

Do We Long For Sexual Intimacy

The physical longing we can have for a deep and profound intimacy with another is real.It is part of our make-up as sexual being. It is a gift of God, but a gift that points to something so much greater and more essential to our happiness and well-being. It is a gift that points to a much deeper and all-encompassing longing that we all have at the core of who we are.

Many are not in touch with this longing, and so they seek fulfillment in the only way they know how… on a more surface, sexual realm. But if one were in touch with the deeper yearning of the heart, they would recognize that the sexual is a means to a much greater fulfillment of the soul. And, this means doesn’t even need to be participated in or acted upon personally in order to show the way. If one has wisdom, they will be able to use the map to transcend to the deeper heart, the deeper yearning that God wants to fulfill.

Why is it that this world is consumed with a spirit of lust and promiscuity? Why is it that masturbation, pre-marital sex and homosexuality  are considered a norm for the majority of society?  And that sexual fulfillment is considered necessary as a basic human need, which is even taught in many psychology classes? Because, the majority of society has been lured into the huge LIE of the evil one, who is the prince of this world.  The majority of society has been hooked and is being reeled into the camp of ‘ol slew-foot himself, and they don’t even realize it. And the lie is exactly this: that we must act upon our sexual longings and impulses in order to find fulfillment and happiness. What makes this lie so hard to see is that it is mixed with the truth that we have a need to be known and loved by another.

Can we see the fruits of this very disordered mentality. The suicide rate has sky-rocketed, the number of those who are depressed or have other mental illnesses is higher than ever before. Can we see the “writing on the wall.”

Can we see that as a country we have tuned God out and are listening to the deceiver, the ‘ol serpent of the Garden of Eden, the “angel of light” who mixes truths with lies to trip us up?

We must transcend to the Heart…
In the Office of Readings for the Presentation of Jesus in the temple, the Church prays, “Zion (which in a sense represents us individually), let your wedding chamber be prepared to receive Christ your King.” It is a prayer expressing the fulfillment of the deeper longing that our sexual desires points too — to have our Hearts penetrated by love Himself. This is the ultimate fulfillment for which we are created. This is the grace we have received at Baptism which few of us tap into.

Our Divine Bridegroom longs to enter deeply into us. “Abide in Me as I abide in you.”He longs for a deep communion of life with us that penetrates to the deepest recesses of our hearts where we hunger to be sated. And, if we aren’t aware that this is the ultimate fulfillment for which we long, we will seek every other kind of person or thing to fill it, to no avail.

We have all been invited to the “Wedding Feast of the Lamb” where we are the bride. For Catholics every Mass, where we are rightly disposed to receive our Divine Eucharistic Bridegroom, we experience a consummation of our Baptismal vows, a “one-flesh union”. We are invited into an intercourse of the Heart with the one who is the perfect lover, who longs to woo us and draw us in, in a pure and holy way.

“Let my beloved come to his garden and eat its choicest fruits” (SS 4:16)… “drink deeply of love” (Proverbs 7:18).

A friend shared with me struggles she was having regarding being very passionate. I sensed she was closing off and repressing her passions. As I brought it all into prayer, I sensed this is what our Lord would want to say to her:

Jesus’ Response to Our Passions:

So You find you are very passionate and you struggle with this, not wanting to fall again as you may have in the past. But, oh, don’t let that passion go to waste. Allow it to be “refashioned” into passion for Me – intimacy with Me, love for souls.

Open up, my dear one. Open up the deepest recesses of your heart and your being which you have closed off with lock and key. Find the key and open the door to let in my healing aroma of love. You’re thirsting my child… you’re thirsting for that deeper love and intimacy that only your Divine Lord can give; but you must be sensitive and attuned to it lest it keep on passing you by. It knocks… I knock; but it is faint and thus there must be great stillness in order to hear it and open up.

You are quite precious to me, you must know; and how I long to hold you to myself, caress you and touch you in the deepest, most intimate and sensitive parts of you, where you are most thirsting for “suck” (Is 66:11). It is not a sexual touch, but one that reaches into the deepest core of your spirit/heart/being. For this is truly the nuptial embrace of which I speak; but your disposition must be as such that I can enter in and you can experience (feel) yourself surrendering totally to me. For, it is in this that true chastity lies; when the sexual passions can be sublimated to a higher, more supernatural level which allows for the nuptial embrace to encompass all of you- profoundly, intimately, totally, wholly. The mere sexual stimulation of the genitals is transcended to allow for a more that could never be compared. For, the mere bodily pleasures are passing away, only to give way to the deepest, most profound of intimate loves.

I long to have you rest your heart, your whole being upon me, to allow my redeeming rays to permeate every part of you. For, I am pure and holy, but I am also human in my divinity. I transcend the sexual pleasures, but my heart is still one of flesh and feels deeply all things. I cry, I laugh, I hold you closely in my embrace, to allow your soul, your whole being, to become one with mine. Let me sanctify you, my beloved, that your flesh might be divinized and thus, you might be one with my Mother in allowing your whole being to proclaim my greatness (cf.Lk4). I don’t want any part of you left aside. I want all of you- all of you. This means your sexuality as well, including your fleshly temptations.

Do you know that if you didn’t have them, you would be a eunuch of this world, not having the FREEDOM to offer this part of yourself to me?…and thus your gift of celibacy would have little meaning.

The more passionate you are, the more deeply you can be transformed into a blazing fire of love for Me and for souls. Look at my Mary of Magdala; so deeply passionate was she of the flesh before she met me; but she sublimated these deep sexual passions (she did not repress them) to allow such energies to be caught up in pouring her heart out in love for ME. Notice how I exulted her in Scripture for her passionate outpouring of love upon me, as she washed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair, as she anointed me with oil in Bethany. So delighted with her was I, that I appeared to her before anyone else after my Mother that early Easter morn.

I told her not to cling to me then, for I had not yet ascended. But now, you MUST cling to me. You can do none other than cling to me; especially as you receive my Body into you in the form of bread, and as you spend time before my presence.

Let me kiss you with the kisses of my mouth my dear one; let me enter into your “enclosed garden”. Let my left arm be under you and my right arm embrace you, that you might drink “freely of [my] love” (cf. SS 1:1,4:12, 8:3, 5:1).

“I was sleeping but my heart kept vigil. I heard my lover knocking: ‘Open to me, my sister, my beloved, my dove, my perfect one’…’My lover put His hand through the opening; my heart trembled within me… Bring me oh King, to your chambers…” (SS 5::2-4, 1:4).