How do you know what your passions are...? Or what or who do you really like? The answers are found in what we cannot live without. By this, I don't mean to die without them but that being without, we just are not ourselves anymore. There is an emptiness, there is discomfort and a restlessness that cannot seem to be filled.
I'm reminded of this today especially as I cannot hear as well the beautiful music coming from the player with my blocked ears, as I cannot sing what I want to express in song with my phlegm-filled throat, as I cannot savour food with my dysfunctional taste buds. Where my daily movements are highly restricted as I am confined to my bed and dreamland most of the time. I am reminded of how much music adds flavour to my life, how much I cannot do without it.
But above this was a moment of being in front of St. Joseph's statue at church today, staring at him on this occasion of his feast day and allowing the moment to transport me into the history of the church. The invitation to sainthood that all of us are called to, the invitation to lead holy lives, God-focused lives. Beneath the yearnings to do the things I like to but cannot do now because of the infection, lies the greatest yearning of God Himself. A restlessness that makes all other restfulness restless. That nothing quite strikes a chord within me the way it does when I am one with Him.
To be without Him, like Cleopas and the other disciple who were leaving Jerusalem in today's Gospel, comes the temptation to flee from His absence, if this is possible at all. The temptation to run away from the restlessness most tangible in what seems to be a waiting without a sure end. And there they were, walking away from the place in which all there was left was emptiness, a confrontational newness of His absence that forces them into a depressing unfamiliarity filled with confusion, disillusionment, fear and loss.
And yet, Jesus caught up with them in their walking away, reminded them of the consolation they once enjoyed of having their hearts burn with the assuring presence of their Master, when their hearts were at rest, being one with Him. It was that fond familiarity as Jesus explained the scriptures and broke the bread that ignited their hearts again with the love and joy, the excitement and decisiveness to return to that very place they had already associated with hopeless waiting and despair. The fond familiarity that opened the heart to recognise what and who one truly loves and desires. And when the heart recognises this, our life course changes forever.
Who is that missing note that completes and makes full the chord in your heart?
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