March 13/Third Monday of Lent
As the hind longs for the running waters, so my soul longs for you, O God.
Athirst is my soul for God, the living God. When shall I go and behold the face of God? ~ Ps 42.2-3
Deep down, our desires are what drive us – or as the British New Wave duo the Eurythmics sang in “Sweet Dreams,” their 1983 hit single, “Everybody’s looking for something.” This want can manifest itself as a piercing ache, or an unquenchable thirst, or a profound and ineffable yearning. And how we seek to satisfy that thirst says a lot about us. Do we chase after worldly pleasures like a youthful appearance or serial sexual liaisons? Do we pursue the imagined happiness that wealth, social prominence, or power will bring? Or do we ache to escape, numbing our deep desire through drugs or alcohol, incessant social media use, or Netflix binges? Each of these things has a shelf life, of course: muscles age and sag, drugs and alcohol wear off (and leave us worse off), social media eventually bares its emptiness and toxicity. God has built desire into our makeup, but when we seek to fill our emptiness with the wrong things, we remain unsatisfied, restless, unhappy. And so we keep looking, turning from one illusory prize to the next – until we realize that what we have been seeking all along, the only thing that will give us lasting joy, is an intimate relationship with God. Our psalmist gives voice to this primal desire. Like an animal goaded by fierce thirst, he yearns to be in God’s presence; his cry, “When shall I go and behold the face of God?” is the perfect expression of what C. S. Lewis called “the inconsolable longing.” As we deepen our prayer life during these days of Lent, let us resolve to honor that longing, to trace it to its true origin, God, and follow our thirst to the living, abundant waters of his eternal love.
O God of light and faithfulness, May our yearning lead us to a deeper knowledge and a greater love of you. Amen.
Two musical interpretations of Psalm 42: To hear the Choir of New College, Oxford, sing Sicut Cervus by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSh1BkZyE6Q and to hear the Choir of St. John’s College, Cambridge, sing Like as the Hart by Herbert Howells, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaUe6yLTgss
For today’s readings, click here: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/031323.cfm
