God’s Thirst Meets Ours: The Desire of Catholic Prayer
Catholic prayer is a personal relationship with God. But this relationship is not the emotional feeling of connection that modern Christians often associate with a “personal relationship with Jesus.” In fact, Catholic spiritual masters often warn against being driven by feelings. While feelings of warmth and closeness to God are certainly real, and are in fact gifts from God (called consolations), to rely too much on these “warm fuzzies” runs the danger of making our faith selfish. The proper way to understand the relationship with God at the center of Catholic prayer is as the mystery of participation in the life of the Holy Trinity through Jesus. Far from making our faith cold and impersonal, this understanding transforms our faith lives from a tawdry romance to a beautiful, deep wooing of the Bride by the Bridegroom.
Within the context of this wooing is an intense desire for the eventual consummation of the relationship. As the lovers strengthen their relationship, they eagerly await the time when they will finally be united.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us
Jesus thirsts; his asking arises from the depths of God’s desire for us. Whether we realize it or not, prayer is the encounter of God’s thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him (CCC 2561).
God’s Thirst – “Desire Out of Fullness”
In what way does God thirst? As the perfect being, God does not thirst out of a lack of anything. Perfection means complete – unchanging. God lacks nothing. He desires nothing out of emptiness. But there is another way to desire something – to “thirst.” Human experience shows us that not only can we desire out of emptiness, but we can also desire out of fullness. Desire out of fulness is almost always born out of love. For example, I know that my best friend is an astronomy buff – even more than I am. If I am looking at the night sky through a telescope and I find an interesting object to look at – say a comet – I would desire to call him and tell him to look at it too. My desire isn’t because I’m lonely or missing him. It isn’t because I lack anything in particular. My desire to share my discovery is born out of my love for my friend. I don’t want him to miss out on the good thing that I am experiencing. That is the sense in which God thirsts for us. God strongly desires a relationship with us. But it’s not because he’s lonely. It’s not because he has some ego-based need to be worshipped. It’s not because our love for Him completes him in any way. God’s desire is born completely out of His love for us. He wants us to be in a relationship with him so that we can find fulfillment and happiness. God created us for this very reason. God is love. It is the nature of love to expand, to give life and to share itself with that new life. The fullness of love spills over into the lives of others.
Our Thirst for God in Catholic Prayer
What of our thirst for God? Our thirst can be both a desire out of emptiness and a desire out of fullness. Our desire out of emptiness comes from the fact that we recognize (eventually) that our hearts yearn for something beyond this world. They yearn for a perfect relationship – intimacy and love. That perfection cannot be found in anything except the perfect being Himself. As Saint Augustine famously said, “We are made for you, oh God, to live forever in your love and our hearts will not rest until they rest in you.” Saint John of the Cross also wrote beautifully about this yearning desire in his poems “The Living Flame of Love” and “The Spiritual Canticle.”
But our desire can also be a desire out of fulness, at least in part. As we come to know God and live in a relationship with Him on earth, we are driven to fill ourselves more completely with Him. We want to be united to Him – not for our own sake – but for His sake, for the glory of God. We want to be united to Him because He loves us and because we know that He thirsts for us. So our thirst and God’s thirst meet in Catholic prayer.
Your Challenge
The only way we can get to this point in our spiritual life is by first establishing a daily habit of prayer.
Your challenge is to get into the habit of praying every day, even if at first it’s nothing more than a morning offering. Let your thirst for God grow, and let it meet His thirst for you.
Brought to you by Jeffrey S. Arrowood at From the Abbey, dedicated to helping you rediscover the JOY of learning and living your faith so you can grow in intimacy with God.