He Alone satisfies

"You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You." St. Augustine

Everything apart from God is bitterness and darkness. Everything is completely unsatisfying and unfulfilling apart from Him. I know this from my own experience. Truly in God Alone is our soul at rest. Any pursuit apart from Him ends is nothingness. Everything ends in complete void. O how I long to shake every person who is living a false life, and have them understand that they are so loved, and that God desires them to live a life worthy of their call.

We live in a world today where we're encouraged to "create our own happiness" or to "do what makes you happy". These mantras do not address the real need and desires of the human heart, nor do they point the soul in the direction of true fulfillment. For the former, to create one's own happiness is impossible simply because God is the giver of all good things. We cannot create happiness. It can only be received from the Fount of all Holiness, which is Jesus Christ, from Whom all good comes. For the latter, to be encouraged to live a life that is based on gratifying the senses in a false pursuit of happiness, is contrary to the words of life, "‘Whoever wishes to come after Me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”*

Our Lord promises that to those who deny themselves and follow Him will receive a hundredfold and eternal life in the age to come. “Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for My sake and for the sake of the gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come. But many that are first will be last, and the last will be first.”* He affirms that in order to attain these promises, we must abase ourselves and be grounded in humility; humility is nothing but the truth. What is the truth? The truth is we are dust and to dust we shall return. Humility is understanding that although we are nothingness, the God-Man, Jesus Christ so loved us beyond our imagining that He agreed to become us. He agreed to live a life of poverty and pain and die the most ignominious death in order to redeem the creature who offended Him. He chose to be condemned in our place. This is the dignity He has bestowed on you and I. How could we ever repay Him? In His unfathomable mercy and love, He does not ask us to repay Him. He asks for only one thing in return, Love.

Love for Love.

"God loves you despite your unworthiness. It is His love which will make you better, rather than your betterment which will make Him love you more. Often during the day say 'God loves me, and He is on my side, by my side."

Bishop Fulton Sheen

We love God by following His commandments, and "His commandments are not burdensome."* I think most people in the 21st generation think that in order to be loved, one has to earn it. That to be accepted, we need to strain at a false ideal. We see this in society everywhere. Immodesty is a widespread vice, where men and women think that by dressing in a provocative way, they can somehow win the affection of another. This is how desperate we are. That we so desire the affection of creatures, that we're willing to degrade our bodies. Do we understand that this is not the answer? I don't think I truly understood this until by the grace of God, I found myself unfulfilled and unsatisfied. I realized that I was searching for something, or rather someone, that loved me simply as I was. This moment of grace opened my eyes to understand that the One who could fulfill my deepest desires, who desired me to become holy and pure, asked nothing of me but trust, and that One person was Jesus Christ. The God-Man who loved me before the foundations of the earth.

“It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle."

St. John Paul the Great

Our bodies are the Temple of the Living God, how necessary it is to live holy lives. Jesus desires to live within us. Do we welcome Him worthily? Do we have pure hearts that Our Lord may find rest within? He thirsts for you and desires to live in your heart. Let us welcome Him, by living pure lives. Let us implore the Blessed Virgin whose whole life was a continuous fiat and who at every moment of her life found favor with God.

“Once you have surrendered yourself, you make yourself receptive. In receiving from God, you are perfected and completed.”

Bishop Fulton Sheen

Jesus loves you, and desires that you should know it. Let us love Him in return.

St. John Paul the Great, pray for us.

Notes:

Matthew 16:24-25

Mark 10:29-31

1 John 5:3