O My Deserter Heart
Last month while I was sitting in my pew waiting for Mass to begin, I was reflecting on the rough few days I'd had before then. I took out a notecard, and just started writing.
O my God,
I am devastated by immense loneliness. I am thrust into the grave by it. I am numb with a disordered desire, a longing... that will never fulfill me.
How long will I live in desolation? How long will I scorn Wisdom and long for her to retreat from me?...
But I want to serve the Lord. I really do.
But O how my weary and deserter heart clings to vice...
My heart betrays me! The human heart is weak! Feeble to earthly passions, and sure to desert it's master no matter the hearts true love.
O Heart, why do you cleave to those who will desert you? O soul, why do you run to those who can never satisfy you?
Again and again, I will say aloud, "I am tired of the way I am living!" But in reality, I love it.
I love what I know I should hate; this is the only logical reason why I do the things that I do!
Why does the heart turn to malice, and towards false loves that will reject it?
Why, O my Heart?
I think we can all start feeling this way at some point in our lives, especially those of us who may struggle with a particular sin, or even with an addiction.
In our heart of hearts, we know we want to do better, and we truly an honestly do want to do better! But we get stuck, trapped with a heart that has a disordered desire toward sin.
It's disheartening, it's devastating, and it can arouse a lot of anger and distrust. That's definitely something that I've experienced in my life.
Some of you may recall that I wrote a post called Desire Quenches Desire a few weeks ago. To summarize that post, I talked about a quote from St. Jerome where he teaches us that the human heart has to love something.
We were created by an outpouring of love, fashioned by the very Divine Persons of Love, and because of this, we are given the vocation to love.
However, this inherent desire for love can become disordered, and we can come to love evil things, things that turn us away from God.
In order to combat this, we have to learn to love the things that are of God. We have to make an effort to put our love into practice and take action.
One of my favorite priests in the entire world, a man that is and always will be a father figure to me, once told me that "mercy is love in the face of sin and suffering." This flipped my world on it's head. Mostly because this doesn't simply apply to the obvious examples of sin and suffering that we come across in our lives.
This also applies to these deserter hearts of ours.
Time and time again I've heard it said that all we need to do to be a Christian is believe in God. Well, the last time I checked Webster, the word "believe" is a verb.
To believe in something requires action, my brothers and sisters. We have to combat sin and suffering wherever we see it, including within ourselves.
That same priest is the one that told me that he believed I would give mercy to everyone on the face of the planet except myself. He saw that showing mercy seemed to come so naturally to me, until I looked into the face of my deserter heart.
Mercy is what wins our hearts over. Mercy is what reveals the Face of God to us all.
Show a little mercy to your deserter hearts today, my dear friends.
Christ has not given up on you. What right then do you have to give up on yourself?