Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI, on Our Yearning for God

"Sometimes while praying the Psalms, I'm caught looking quite uncomfortably into a mirror reflecting back to me my own seeming dishonesty. For example, we pray these words in the Psalms: My soul longs for you in the night. ... Like a deer that yearns for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you my God. ... For you alone do I long! For you alone do I thirst!

"If I'm honest, I have to admit that a lot of times, perhaps most times, my soul longs for a lot of things that do not seem of God. How often can I honestly pray: For you, God, alone do I long. For you alone do I thirst! In my restlessness, my earthy desires, and natural instincts, I long for many things that don't appear very God-focused or heavenly at all. I suspect that's true for most of us for good parts of our lives. Rare is the mystic who can say those prayers and mean them with her full heart on any given day.

"But human desire is a complex thing. There's a surface and there's a depth, and in every one of our longings and motivations we can ask ourselves this: What am I really looking for here? I know what I want on the surface, here and now, but what am I ultimately longing for in this?"

In a recent commentary, Father Ronald Rolheiser, O.M.I., president of the Oblate School of Theology, San Antonio, TX, reflected on our restlessness, 'depressions, cold lonely seasons, times of doubt," and other challenges we face as humans and our search and, throughout all of this, our yearing for God alone (whether we are aware of it or not).

To access Father Ron's complete post, please visit:

The Boston Pilot: Echoes. Inchoate Desire (7 JUL 17)