In this episode of Midnight Carmelite, we explore the nature of human desire and how it shapes our attention and actions. From material goals to social ambitions, our desires can easily fragment our hearts and subject us to endless pursuits. Referencing St. John of the Cross and Jesus's teachings on poverty of spirit, we discuss how desiring God alone unifies the heart and rightly orders all other needs, freeing us to truly love Him.
You have the concepts, but you need the tool. When the audio ends and the silence returns, don't go back to "trying harder." Use the "5-Minute Prayer Reset" to stabilize your interior life and prepare for the Divine Physician.
TRANSCRIPT
Hello there. Welcome to this week's episode of Midnight Carmelite. I want to talk to you this week about the heart and desire.
The heart desires. You desire certain things. It could be some sort of edification, like you would like to know more about something. It could be social; you would like to be friends with certain people, be invited to parties, or gather at some hobby. Also, it may be monetary, some sort of material thing. When you desire those things, they take up your attention. For example, if you have a goal of saving an extra hundred dollars every month, you set a goal, you desire that, and so your attention and desire is on achieving that goal. Another example would be you want to be promoted at work, so you do extra work and show it to your boss. Your heart desires a promotion, a couple extra bucks a month, to date somebody, or a bigger house. All these things are desires from the deepest center of ourselves, meaning we push ourselves out towards things we want.
There are hierarchies of desires. If you don't have enough money to eat, your desire will be to look for food. If you have bad clothing, you'll be looking for clothing. You work your way up. Once you have certain ones fulfilled, you desire other things.
God calls us to be content with Him alone. If you actually think about what I just said, that makes a lot of sense on why today people are so fractured. If you look at things you desire, you'll be surprised at what you find. You'll be surprised at what you think you're certain about that are good for you, but maybe they are not. We don't do enough today to examine our desires, to examine what our heart wants. What's happening is we're allowing ourselves to be led by and respond to things in a way that is not just responding like, 'I've encountered this new thing.' There's no actual relation, in the sense that the relation is asymmetrical. You're being pulled by something, rather than communicating with it. Our desires well up in us, and we get pulled by them.
In other words, this is key; our hearts become subject to our desires. Because in order to reach what we desire, we have to subject ourselves to it. So for the promotion, you spend your time on things that will help you achieve that goal. You subject yourself to that particular desire, trying to fulfill it, to rest in the goal of that which you desire. Desire is to say 'I lack' or 'I have a privation', seeing a gap, a capacity to take in what you desire because you believe it's good for you.
But only God alone is good, as Jesus said in the Gospels. We often get confused about that passage, but it means we should have poverty of spirit, where we desire God alone. That shows the power of our heart: the heart can be subjected to these desires, or, if our desire is for God, as St. John of the Cross says, the heart can subject all things to itself. By being free and only desiring God, the heart will not be divided. It will be singularly focused on one goal: God. When we see that and live by that, this multiplicity of other desires is not as important. If you're starving, you desire food to survive, but the foundation is that God is ultimately what matters. God will provide food, God will work with you, God will help you however He sees fit for your salvation. Finally, when you do this and you lose the care of all these things, you burn with love for God because He will be your one desire.
