Your Desires Tell You What You Are --- 

By the late Father Kilian McGowan, C.P. -- 
Used with permission, from the Passionist Priests ---

For where your Treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:21

Do you really want to know what you're like? Study your desires. What things does your heart habitually seek? Desire is like a thermometer that actually measures your spiritual life. Worldly desires lead to a life of worldliness. Sensual desires make a sensual person. Self-centered desires cause a mediocre and selfish life.

If your desire for God is only half-hearted, you're leading a tepid Christian life. You're suffering from spiritual mediocrity and you're a long way from perfection of the First Commandment. If your desire for God is consistently ardent, you're making progress. If it's ever on the increase, you're making great progress in holiness.

God loves great desires. If a man ceases to desire God and the things of God, his soul is in a tragic state. Earthbound, tied to earth by a hundred shackles of sensual and worldly desires, he seems incapable of any spiritual ambition or aspiration for God. Spiritually he is a walking corpse! He needs a miracle of resurrection to awaken his soul to its need for God. Such people, incidentally, usually are a burden to themselves and to their friends.

God loved Daniel because he was a man of desires. He loves anyone who has great desires, Christlike ambitions, or longings for the spread of God's Kingdom. These are the timbers used by God to ignite the world with His love. Why is a cloistered contemplative like St. Theresa named "Patroness of the Missions?" Because of her overwhelming desire for the conversion of all souls to God!

Desire is always the first step of your soul toward God. If there's no desire for Christian Perfection...if your soul experiences no deep need of God, obviously you'll expend no great effort to achieve union in love with Him. That's why the study of Christ is so basic to a fervent Christian life. In meditation He is seen to be totally desirable both as God and man. There the desire to follow Him is ignited and stimulated. So, if you want to know what you are really like, take out fifteen minutes for some serious soul-searching and make this test...

Think of those things or objects in life that you consider most desirable. Be very honest with yourself and make an objective list. What are those things upon which your heart has become attached? This list will uncover the depth of your vanity, your pride and your sensuality. It will also point up any secret avarice, envy, or any other species of selfishness. Of course, it will also be a measure of your fervor and love of God.

Is God just an afterthought in your life? Do you use Him just to call on for the fulfillment of your own desires? Do you strive to bend your will to His, rather than to try to get Him to conform His Sanctifying will to your own? Do you really consider the perfect love of God as the greatest and most desirable object in life? Do you have any longing for greater union with our Lord? What do you do about it?

An honest appraisal of one's self is always the first step towards self-improvement. Any psychiatrist will add that it's also the foundation of emotional maturity. So face up to your habitual desires. Find out just what does motivate your usual activities. Compare these desires with the Beatitudes given by Christ in His Gospel. Then, you'll know whether your desires need intensification or reformation!

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WHERE IS YOUR TREASURE?: So many people spend their whole lives working for material goods - you know, just "stuff" that we think we 'have to have' in order to be happy! After college, they move into a tiny little apt. and work hard filling it up with "stuff" until they get so much that they move into a house, filling it with more "stuff," then move into a bigger house, working overtime to have enough money to buy even more "stuff," until they reach middle age and decide it's time to downsize, so they give away lots of the "stuff" they worked so hard for, and by the time they reach their retirement years, they are living back in a tiny little apt, and all that "stuff" they worked so hard for was given or thrown away, and they look back over their life and say, "Was my whole life spent working for "stuff?" Life goes by so quickly and there is no time to waste! We must decide now how we want to use this life that God has given us. The Bible tells us in Matt 6:19-21, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moths and vermin destroy . . . for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
TEXT: Mal 3:8-10, Phil 4:19, Matt 25:23, Rev 17:14