Fr. José Juan Sánchez Jácome / ACN.- It is not merely the end of a search or the result of a choice; rather, the desire for God is part of our very human condition. The experience of God sometimes flows as unexpected and surprising answers, and at other times it certainly does not go beyond the realm of questions, but in any case it is an indelible desire that turns our existence toward the sphere of the divine.
Hence some maintain that the mere desire for God is already the beginning of faith. It cannot be ignored, it cannot be repressed, it cannot be uprooted, because the desire for God is connatural to the human being. We know it, we sense it, even though we are not always able to satisfy the soul’s need for God.
One cannot cease to love, cease to reflect, cease to be free, for that would mean altering and conditioning human nature. Nor can one repress, persecute, or combat the desire for God, for our life would lose its balance, dramatically limit its horizons, and generate adverse living conditions for humanity itself.
This cannot be done, although at certain moments in history there have been ideologies and political regimes that imposed inhuman conditions to persecute and repress the desire for God, generating chaos and desolation.
Bishop Reig Plá refers to the injustice committed by governments when they attempt to expel God from society and from the human heart: “Man has a desire for the infinite, for the absolute, and there is an inadequacy between that desire and what the world can offer us. If we ask things for what they cannot give us, that desire for the infinite finds no answer, and there is no other way out than despair or accommodation to things… Hence the radical injustice of the ‘world without God’ in which we live, where we have not only expelled God from the public square, but are also expelling Him from the hearts and consciences of people.”
“There is no greater injustice than closing heaven,” said Julián Marías. Closing the doors of the transcendent horizon in a society like ours is the greatest injustice, because it shuts off from the human heart that aspiration which is present in it by being divine breath, by being children of God, by being inhabited by the Holy Spirit, by being the very dwelling place of the Trinity.
Attempts of this nature have not been lacking in our history, with terrible consequences. Nevertheless, the human being clings to, cultivates, and defends this desire for God, despite these cultural and historical vicissitudes.
We see this desire for God not only in the faithful, humble, devout, and persevering people who have shaped their souls around Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Church, and the sacraments; in the young people who, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously, thirst for God. We also see it in the lives of so many brothers and sisters who have lived on the margins of Christian culture, in people who perhaps openly combated the Christian faith; in brothers and sisters who presumed not to need God, feeling self-sufficient with their money, prestige, knowledge, and power, but who ultimately experienced emptiness and a deep thirst for the infinite.
“If we find a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world,” said C. S. Lewis.
Benedict XVI, for his part, maintained: “Man carries within himself a thirst for the infinite, a longing for eternity, a search for beauty, a desire for love, a need for light and truth that impels him toward the Absolute; man carries within himself the desire for God.”
We see this desire for God in the Greeks who had come to Jerusalem for the Passover feasts and said to Philip, the one from Bethsaida of Galilee: “We wish to see Jesus,” according to the Gospel.
Greeks, precisely! They came from philosophy, from culture, from the metropolis of human thought. Greeks who knew the tradition of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle pose to a fisherman perhaps the principal concern of their lives: “We wish to see Jesus.”
And Jesus’ response becomes paradigmatic, for it changes their frameworks and anticipates the fullest way to see God and satisfy the thirst for the infinite. Jesus’ response does not point to beauty, or to the cosmos, or to inner harmony, but speaks of the mystery of the cross in order to receive the light and satisfy the desire for God.
Considering the Hellenistic cultural world, Bishop Fulton Sheen commented on this Gospel passage as follows: “Jesus reminded them that He was not merely a teacher; that if He were among them He would not be playing the role of a Plato or a Solon… Human nature does not attain its greatness through poetry and art, but by passing through death… He had not come to be a moralist, but a Savior. He did not come to add something to the precepts of Socrates, but to give a new life…
The Greeks had come to our Lord saying: ‘We would like to see Jesus,’ probably because of the majesty and beauty that, as worshippers of the god Apollo, they so appreciated. But He alluded to the battered appearance He would present once on the cross, and added that only through the cross could there be in their lives the beauty of the soul in the new regenerated life…”
Like Philip and the apostles, we are here to channel this desire, to be bridges when it comes to reaching Jesus, to manifest the new life we receive from Him, and to continue proclaiming the Gospel of the cross, which is “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Cor 1:23).
This desire for God exists in all people, sometimes fully recognized and at other times repressed; therefore, our mission, like Philip’s, is to lead them to Jesus, to show Him, and not merely to demonstrate Him.
“We wish to see Jesus.” This is the petition we make to the Church and which Pope Leo XIV has been responding to in a very beautiful way during his pastoral visit to Spain.
Today, with emotion and in the words of Psalm 26, we express our greatest desire to the Lord: “I seek your face.”
“This is the desire of my life that gathers and summarizes all my desires: to see your face. Bold words that I would not have presumed to utter had you not given them to me yourself. In other times, no one could see your face and remain alive. Now you remove the veil and reveal your presence. And once I know that, what else can I do for the rest of my days but seek that face and desire that presence?
That is now my only desire, the target of my actions, the object of my prayers and efforts, and the very meaning of my life. I have studied your word and know your revelation. I know what wise theologians say of you, what the saints have recounted about their dealings with you. But now I know that I can aspire to much more, because you tell me so, you call me and invite me. And I want it with all my being. I want to see your face.
I have knowledge, but I want experience; I know your word, but now I want to see your face. You know the hour and the way. You are the Lord of the human heart and can enter it whenever it pleases you. Here is my invitation and my plea. It is for me to wait. So I do. ‘Wait for the Lord, be strong, take courage… and wait for the Lord’” (C. G. Vallés).