Holy Hunger

"For paradise we long. For perfection we were made. We don't know what it would look or feel like, but we must settle for nothing less. This longing is the source of the hunger and dissatisfaction that mark our lives; it drives our ambition." - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

Much to my surprise, I keep being led to reflect on passages in this book that I've never written about before. Not exclusively, but still. 

For most sins, it's easy to see something good that has been corrupted. They tend to represent some basic human need that has become a disproportionate priority. Each of the seven deadly sins has a corresponding virtue identified as its cure or counterpart. Those virtues are not the need grown out of control, but the approach to bringing balance back into our lives. While Fr. Neuhaus isn't specifically calling out sin here, what he's expressing is the longing that can lead to several of the deadly sins, including greed, gluttony, envy, and lust. And he seems to be saying to be careful not to throw the baby out with the disgusting bath water. 

"The hunger is for nothing less than paradise, nothing less than perfect communion with the Absolute--with the Good, the True, the Beautiful--communion with the perfectly One in whom all the fragments of our scattered existence come together at last and forever. We must not stifle this longing. It is a holy dissatisfaction. Such dissatisfaction is not a sickness to be healed, but the seed of a promise to be fulfilled." - ibid.

Don't let the longing grow out of proportion into sin, but neither squelch it out. I've skipped the part about how our friendships and loves are unsatisfactory, less than whole efforts to fulfill this longing, because to me it's more important to remember how they give us the greatest satisfaction when we receive them in the context of the greater longing for the Perfect. Each time we allow God's love to form a relationship in our lives we must avoid the temptation to grasp it and twist it into something that meets only our needs and desires. When we do, we find that those become part of how God works in and through us to create a fellowship that is the smallest insight into the perfect one we will finally enter into one day. Sometimes we are privileged to work on the twisted parts of those relationships and let God make them more conducive to his plan for our eternal lives.

When I come back to read these words, I want to remember that they were written in a time of great turmoil, as Russia has invaded the Ukraine. Even Putin's desire to recreate (his flawed recollections of) Soviet glory has roots in something not entirely evil. Our battle is still spiritual, as is our enemy. (That doesn't at all mean that we should let him have his way.) Even though I am now too old to be required to fast on this Ash Wednesday, I have entered into prayer and fasting anyway, and am offering the hunger in my belly as a further prayer for the protection of the people of Ukraine and an unlikely change of heart for those who have undertaken this invasion.