A Spirituality of Desires

A SPIRITUALITY OF DESIRES

In 2017 I came across an article about a Maryknoll sister, Cecilia Wood, who passed away in Davao City on August 17 that year. She left this world at 95 years old. She had been assigned in 1946 as a religious sister to the Philippines where she had taught at the elementary and high school levels until 1962. Returning to the U.S., she completed her doctor of medicine degree in 1974 and finished her residency in internal medicine in 1977. Serving as a medical doctor in the Philippines thereafter, she retired in 2011, remaining in the Philippines.

Reading her story exhumed desires deep within me, buried for decades. Almost as if I was looking in a mirror, I remembered that I, too, had wanted to become a medical doctor and dedicate my life to service and ministry. I had considered religious life.

The shock of the remembrance of my longtime desires was revelatory.

Ignatian spirituality has been described as a spirituality of desires, meaning, we should be attentive to our desires because God speaks to us through our desires. While self-denial is very much an imperative of the Christian life, unremitting self-denial can obscure or even destroy the voice of God speaking within us.

Years ago the vocation director of a religious order emphatically declared to me, “What you want is what God wants.”

In contrast, I had been told in Opus Dei, “You have plans but God has other plans for you.”

Our desires should be the subject matter of the discernment of the spirits. If they are good, legitimate, or holy desires, they may cast light on God’s will for us...but then again they may not. However, we won’t know any better if we ignore or deny them entirely.

Only if we make our desires the subject matter of the discernment of the spirits will we be able to judge truly and decide rightly. In Jesus’ words, “Wisdom is vindicated by her works.” (Matthew 11:19)

Numerous times in the Spiritual Exercises Saint Ignatius of Loyola has underscored the importance of our desires in the spiritual life.

In Schooled by the Spirit: A Prayer Companion to Ignatian Spirituality (2009), Father Ramon Maria Luza Bautista, S.J. calls our attention to, for example, No. 48, First Exercise, The Second Prelude:

“I will ask God our Lord for what I want and desire.”

http://spex.ignatianspirituality.com/SpiritualExercises/Puhl

—Louis J. Puhl, S.J., transl., Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1951)

Father Bautista also highlights Nos. 55, 65, 104, 139, 152, 193, 203, 221, and 233 of the Spiritual Exercises.

He explains:

“If…God has very specific desires for each of us his beloved ones, at least for certain situations, then we need to discern them well. To discern God’s desires for us is nothing else but to discern God’s will for us at different points in our lives. And this is where our own individual, personal desires can help when discerning God’s desires or will for us.

“As human beings, we are creatures of desires. To be human and alive is to desire. As persons of desires, we often can even have conflicting desires. Like Ignatius, all of us can have holy desires and at the same time self-seeking ones present in us side by side with one another, even competing against one another.

“…our desires reveal to us who we truly are. They tell us where our heart is. …usually, where our deepest desires are, there our deepest passions and consolations are. Hence, desires actually are an excellent source of valuable data for discernment. …if we are truthful enough, we would see that often our most intense and persistent desires are indicative of our more authentic self in Christ….

“…discernment of our own great desires for ourselves is not very different from discernment of God’s great desires for us. …it is essential that we regularly sift these desires of ours, paying attention to them, owning them, befriending them, naming them, clarifying and discerning which ones are in ‘greater’ harmony with our more genuine self….”

—Ramon Maria Luza Bautista, S.J., Schooled by the Spirit: A Prayer Companion to Ignatian Spirituality (2009), pages 43-44

Concerning our spiritual desires, Father James Martin, S.J. lists eight ways in which they reveal the action and direction of God.

Incompletion

“At times you may have had the feeling that, even though you’ve had some success and happiness, something’s missing.”

Common longings

“Sometimes you experience a strange or fleeting desire in the midst of an everyday situation…. Such common longings are ways of becoming conscious of the desire for God.”

Uncommon longings

“These are more intense feelings than common longings.”

Exaltation

“Here you feel lifted up, or likewise, a sense of exaltation or happiness.”

Clarity

“Sometimes you feel tantalizingly close to understanding exactly what the world is about. Yes, you think to yourself, now I get it.”

Desires to follow

“These desires are much more explicit. It is not a desire for ‘I know not what,’ but for ‘I know exactly what.’”

Desires for holiness

“An attraction to personal holiness is another sign of the desire for God. This can be triggered in at least two ways: first, learning about holy people in the past; and second, meeting holy people today.”

Vulnerability

“God is able to reach us because our defenses are lowered. …You are more open. Vulnerability can awaken your innate desires for God, which have been buried under layers of resistance.”

https://uscatholic.org/articles/201006/more-than-a-feeling-a-desire-for-god/

—James Martin, S.J., “More than a Feeling: A Desire for God,” U.S. Catholic: Faith in Real Life (June 30, 2010)

I would make additional clarifying distinctions in Father Martin’s list.

Martin distinguishes between our desires for God—“common longings” and “uncommon longings”—and holy desires, which are also desires for God but they are specified in some way. They include desires for good, holy things—Martin calls them “desires to follow”—and “desires for holiness.”

The third type of desires that Martin describes are unfulfilled desires—dissatisfaction or “incompletion” and anguish or “vulnerability.” They are “holes in the heart,” so to speak. In this case, the subject is not fully aware of their desires for God.

Lastly, Martin describes desires that are fulfilled, entailing “exaltation” or “clarity.” They are confirmatory emotions.

Applying the Ignatian understanding of the discernment of the spirits, we might say they are “consolation” and affirm the soundness of a judgment or a decision.

Confirmatory emotions follow upon the discernment of the spirits based on the principle of congruence, that is:

“…the principle of consistency, logical and moral, between claims based on the spirits—conveyed, for example, through visions, locutions, and the like—and the beliefs and actions indicated thereby, and external circumstances. External circumstances include the favorable judgment of legitimate and appropriate religious or spiritual authority, and the support of reason and demonstration. Inconsistency points towards repudiation.”

https://oddsandendsgonzalinhodacosta.blogspot.com/2017/07/discernmentwhat-is-it.html

When all the pieces of a puzzle fall into place…when everything seems to fit together…when our understanding of a particular situation is marked by consistency in all its various parts, that is, by congruence—then we experience “clarity” and the “exaltation” that follows upon it.