In the last blog post, I explained how everyone is welcomed on the journey to communion with God. I also explained why it is the most important accomplishment you will ever undertake in your life. Not your earthly accomplishments, but your spiritual accomplishments that are only between you and the One above.

In this lesson, we learn about the misconception that some people have, believing they are unable to love God or pursue him with all their might. I was once talking to a friend who, by all accounts, is a very virtuous person. She was telling me about her anxieties and how she felt like there was something missing in her life. I suggested that she try connecting with God for guidance and shared how becoming disciplined in that part of my own life had relieved so much of the anxiety I used to feel. Ironically, growing up, she had a much deeper connection to her spiritual life than I did. As time goes on, as it does for many of us, life takes over and we slowly begin to focus on the things of the world. Along with the not so pleasant experiences we can have in religious settings, we can drift away from that connection. We mistakenly think that the people teaching us or the people at church represent God perfectly. When they hurt us, become cliquey, or let us down, we begin to project those experiences onto God Himself. We conclude, “Well, God is clearly not real, because why would they treat me this way when I was here searching for Him?”

I’ve learned in my own journey of searching for Christ that people are not who I need to be seeking God in. People are flawed, and they will always find a way to disappoint me. If I think of them as a reflection of God, then I will always think God is this terrible thing that could never love me right. If I focus endlessly on rules, times, and perfect actions, I will never feel good enough for God. Anyway, my friend told me, “I avoid praying now because if I’m going to pray, I want to do it perfectly, or I don’t want to do it at all.” And I thought to myself, what does that even mean? Osuna explains that the beginning of searching for God is not about your perfect actions or how impressive your prayer life is. It’s about the position of your heart and whether it is truly facing in His direction.

There’s also this belief that there is no way I could ever love God like that. When you’re at the beginning and you see how the saints, or even people who seem deeply connected to God, talk about loving Him, you might think to yourself, “There is no way I could ever get to a place where I love God like that. How could I love something I can’t see, touch, or talk to like I talk to other people?” The biggest lie we tell ourselves out of ignorance is that we are incapable of doing something. I remember when I first read St. Teresa of Avila’s writings, I used to think it was so interesting how she described her meditations and the way she loved God. I would think, That sounds so intense. She would describe being in front of the Eucharist in Adoration like she was experiencing such profound feelings. As you slowly start to open your heart, you begin to feel it too. I personally can’t even explain what it is that I feel, but I know I feel love within me. After a few year of going to Adoration, it has become like an itch I need to relieve. I’m finally like, Oooohhhh… I get it.

External practices help, and I think you naturally grow into those if you’re coming from a genuine place of wanting to know Him. My spiritual practices, at least to me, have slowly been arriving one by one. The desire has appeared as I have grown in sitting before Him in Adoration. I’ve said it before, but I didn’t start going to church because I wanted to be around people. I started going because I felt this desire to spend more time with God in the Mass. I slowly went from going to whatever Sunday Mass I could manage to asking my job to schedule me after a certain hour so I could make it to the 10 a.m. Mass. It’s a craving now. I don’t feel quite right if I don’t make it. When I can catch a weekday Mass, I’m there. Again, it’s not because of the people. It feels like a genuine desire to spend time with Him.

I’ve been going to my church for two years now, and I remember thinking that I’d like to serve again like I did when I was younger. Then they made the announcement inviting people to join the Lectors and Eucharistic Ministry, and I spontaneously signed up. It’s becoming a sort of weekly devotion now that is bringing so much joy into my life. I have yet to really make a friend at church, and I’m open to it, but it’s the desire to be there, to spend time with Him, that is filling me. Not the people. 

If you have the desire, that is a gift from God, and one you should grab while you have it. Osuna says those who recognize that desire need to run toward it like an opportunity because the door has been made clear. But those who ignore the call lean further away, and the desire slowly fades, making it harder and harder to recognize. Eventually, it can become a lingering anxiety that stays in the body. Most people don’t realize that the anxiety they feel, that longing for something, isn’t random. It is the inability to recognize that they are longing for something bigger than themselves. Osuna says that the soul who responds to God’s call begins to transform into a new person. The heart shifts its desires, and our lives naturally begin to follow whatever our hearts love most. He gives the example of a traveler who thinks only of reaching his destination. In many ways, we become what we consistently seek. Our attention, our desires, and our habits slowly shape the people we become. I remember telling my friend the other day that I couldn’t believe how unaware I had been of the direction my life was heading. Looking back now, I realize that many of the connections I had made weren’t built on solid foundations. It felt as though everything has been stripped away, and my life is moving in an entirely different direction. She laughed and said, “To be honest, ever since I can remember, all you used to tell me when we were younger was that you wanted to have fun and make friends.”

She was right.

For so many years, that was my focus. I remember constantly thinking, I just want to have fun. And in many ways, I did. I had a really good time for a while. But after years of chasing that direction, I slowly realized I wasn’t having fun anymore. My life had become filled with an emptiness that I couldn’t quite explain. I remember being at parties where, after a few hours, it felt like everyone had entered this sort of trance. They were smiling, laughing, dancing, and completely immersed in the moment. Yet all of a sudden, it was as if a strange sobriety would come over me. I could see everyone around me enjoying themselves, but I no longer felt connected to the experience. I remember looking around and thinking, What am I doing here? There was this deep sense that something was missing. Like i was waiting for my long lost love to come back to me. Looking back now, I think deep down I already knew that my time in that city was coming to an end. While everyone else seemed to be searching for the next high, I found myself going home disappointed with my night. I would get home and begin sobbing uncontrollably because I felt utterly alone, even though I had spent the night surrounded by so many people. I remember thinking, What is wrong with me? I’m living in this beautiful city. I’m experiencing everything I’ve wanted for so long, and yet I feel completely empty.

That is what Osuna means when he says that our lives become what our hearts desire. Am I saying those people have no meaning or that everyone at those parties was living an empty life? No, not at all. I can only speak about my own journey. For me, that chapter was coming to an end, and I felt empty. I was reading the Diary of St. Faustina, and one part deeply moved me. Before becoming a nun, she wanted to follow her vocation, but her family strongly opposed it. She listened to them for a time, set her calling aside, and tried to live like everyone else her age. One day, she and her siblings went to a dance. While she was dancing, she was suddenly overcome by the thought, What am I doing here? She couldn’t understand the emptiness she felt. She writes that she became so overwhelmed she ran into another room to escape the party. It was there that she had a mystical experience in which Jesus appeared to her and asked, “How long shall I put up with you and how long will you keep putting Me off?” Overwhelmed, she left the party immediately and simply began walking. She walked until she arrived at the steps of a church, where she realized that her vocation had been calling her all along. While I am not comparing my experience to St. Faustina’s at all, I am certainly not claiming anything mystical happened to me, I was struck by how accurately she described that feeling of standing in the middle of a room full of people who were having fun while feeling completely disconnected from it. It felt as though someone had finally put words to something I had never been able to explain. 

Now, after my own rock bottoms, and finding my way back to Christ and discovering His love in Adoration, I understand what my heart had been longing for all along. Osuna says that once the soul has been awakened, it becomes like the traveler who cannot stop thinking about his destination. You keep looking until you find Him. You remember Him throughout the day. You search for Him in everything. You begin talking to Him quietly in your mind throughout the day. No one is forcing you to do this. Love itself begins drawing you in. I went to speak with a priest at my sister’s parish recently because I wanted him to pray over me and give me some guidance about what I had been experiencing in Adoration. He told me it was beautiful and encouraged me to keep going. He also told me he wanted to be something of a spiritual director for me because spiritual guidance is important during seasons like this. His concern wasn’t to discourage me but to make sure I didn’t wander in the wrong direction. Before I left, he asked me to spend at least twenty minutes in Adoration every day. I immediately told him No, thats not possible for me. “Father, I live in the city. There aren’t many perpetual Adoration chapels here. I already drive forty-five minutes into Maryland on my days off just to go. There isn’t one nearby.” He smiled and laughed. “Why don’t you ask God to guide you to one? I bet there’s one closer than you think.” So I did. Within a week, I found a small perpetual Adoration chapel just steps from the Metro station where I get off for work. I was in complete shock. For over a year and a half, I had no idea it existed. It was tucked away down an alley in the middle of the city, hidden behind a coded entrance that I had unknowingly walked past countless times. Now I go to work, and while I’m there I find myself thinking, I can’t wait until I’m off so I can stop by the chapel, sit with Him, adore Him, and simply be. I am so incredibly grateful. The priest lives about an hour away, and I haven’t had the chance to see him again, but I can’t wait to tell him he was right. There really was one much closer than I expected. That is what Osuna means. Once the heart has been awakened, its desires begin to change. The things that once consumed your attention slowly lose their grip, and something far greater begins to call you. Looking back over these last few years, I can honestly say that my life has changed because my deepest desire has changed.

Osuna explains how so many of us spend so much time searching outwardly and thinking that we have to reach these levels of perfection to reach God. We spend hours, days, and years reading, studying books, and consuming knowledge. I remember I had a friend who told me she studied religion in college and had read the entirety of the Bible, but she was no longer a religious person, again for the many reasons that people choose to walk away. I thought to myself, how could you possibly not be moved when you’re reading the Bible, let alone studying it as your major in college? Osuna says that sometimes religious people focus so much on outward practice and mental understanding that they miss the most important part, moving into the heart. Knowledge that does not descend into the heart disappears because it was never anchored. You can know every verse in the Bible and read all the books you want, but if you are not going within and sitting with it in a place of humility and surrender, it will never transform you. Osuna describes the divided heart over several pages, and I actually sat with this section for a few days. He gives the example of a broken cup that can’t hold water. A cracked vessel leaks. Likewise, a divided heart can’t hold wisdom. Every worry, vanity, distraction and desire for approval chips away at the vessel until eventually nothing remains whole enough to receive God deeply. We cannot claim to want God while still wanting the things of the world in equal measure. It’s one or the other.

Now, do I think he means that wanting God means you will no longer have goals or no longer exist as a human being in society? No, I don’t think that. I also don’t think it’s easy to strip away the desires of the world. I now see how lucky I have been that God has stripped away some of the desires I thought I wanted, because I definitely wasn’t going to let go of them on my own. The desires of the world are attractive. If they weren’t, it wouldn’t be so hard to not make them the primary focus of our lives. To surrender your heart to God and to genuinely want what He wants for you is a process of deep mental reckoning. As I surrender, it has not taken away my desire to be a human being in the world. This is the experience I’m living. I’m here, and I’m living it. Wanting God does not make you anti human. I think it means that I want what He wants for me. He is genuinely my highest priority, and anything that doesn’t align with that desire eventually has to go. I actually find that I am a far more well rounded person now than I was before I made that shift. My emotions are more regulated, and I find that I can now hear the mental pause before I even have the desire to crash out on someone. It feels like I’m about to let my emotions get the best of me, and then something invisible gently holds my shoulder and says, “Don’t do it.”

He is not saying that God literally cannot enter a person who is worried, distracted, or imperfect. He means that a person whose attention is constantly divided cannot receive, retain, or live from the wisdom and grace God gives. Your heart becomes divided when different parts of you are continually being pulled in opposing directions. For example, you want God, but you are also consumed with what other people think of you. You want peace, but you constantly feed thoughts that make you anxious or resentful. You want to pray, but you allow every passing concern, fantasy, memory, or desire to carry your mind away. I don’t personally think it’s easy to get to a place of true conviction. I think it’s quite hard. Like I said, I don’t think I came to this place in a graceful way. It felt more like everything hit the fan, I was alone, and I had nowhere else to go. But I knew I wanted something more.

Overall, the themes of this section are to follow the deepest desires of your heart and to follow them while they are still there, because once that desire begins to fade, it becomes harder to recognize. Outward actions matter least. It is about the posture of the heart. Is your heart facing in the direction of God?

You can be outwardly searching for God while inwardly being very far away. We can even take our religion and turn it into something that is for show or for the outward appearance of holiness. If we are not anchoring our knowledge in the heart with humility, it never has the opportunity to become wisdom. You become inwardly whole when your thoughts, desires, intentions, and actions begin moving toward the same destination. This section about the divided self reminded me of so many of the books I’ve read. Sometimes you have in mind the kind of person you want to be. You tell the world about your ideal self, all the things you want to do and the things you want to accomplish, but most people just stay there. You take a step back and look at what they actually do, and it isn’t aligned with who they present themselves to be. Being whole and moving your entire self in one direction, toward God, is the only way to truly become whole and sustain it.

When we’re divided, we can’t see ourselves clearly. I’ve learned, and this is why I find this section so compelling, that I no longer want to be divided. I don’t want to be unaware of myself or the things I do. I don’t want to feel enslaved to my impulses or my unhealthy mental habits. I’m heading in one direction and wish to become truly whole. God has shown me it is possible to no longer feel empty. The direction toward Him leads me to the deepest desires of my heart. I still want to be human. I am in the world, and I don’t feel the need to escape it anymore, even the hard stuff. 

I’ll end it here, and as always, I hope you leave feeling a little more inspired.

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