(TAKEN FROM THE HOLY FATHER’S CATECHESIS ON DISCERNMENT, AT THE WEDNESDAY GENERAL AUDIENCE, AUGUST, 2022—JANUARY, 2023.)
After prayer and self-knowledge, that is, praying and knowing oneself, today I would like to talk about another indispensable, so to speak, “ingredient”: today I would like to talk about desire…What kind of knowledge is this? Spiritual teachers refer to it using the term “desire”, which, fundamentally, is a nostalgia for fullness that never finds complete fulfilment, and is the sign of God’s presence in us.
A sincere desire knows how to deeply touch the chords of our being, which is why it is not extinguished in the face of difficulties or setbacks…Desire makes you strong, it makes you courageous, it makes you keep going forward, because you want to arrive at that: “I desire that”.
Often it is precisely desire which makes the difference between a successful, coherent and lasting project, and the thousands of ambitions and good intentions with which, as they say, “hell is paved”: “Yes, I would like, I would like, I would like…”, but you do nothing. The era in which we live seems to promote maximum freedom of choice, but at the same time it atrophies desire — you want to be satisfied continually — which is mostly reduced to the desire of the moment.
Many people suffer because they do not know what they want from their lives; they have probably never gotten in touch with their deepest desire…Hence the risk of passing one’s existence between attempts and expedients of various kinds, never getting anywhere, and wasting precious opportunities…[Let us ask the Lord] to help us know His deepest desire, which God himself has placed in our heart.. It is an immense grace, the basis of all the others: to allow the Lord, as in the Gospel, to work miracles for us.