Ten Evenings With God by Illia Delio

Author:Illia Delio [Delio, Illia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780764862274
Publisher: Liguori Publications
Published: 2012-04-29T22:00:00+00:00

Discernment: A Spiral of Love

The saints indicate to us that living in God’s love is living with continuous desire. Desire is the gravity of our lives, born out of the deepest spiritual center within us; therefore, to be attuned to our desires is to be attuned to the direction of our lives. Thomas Merton once wrote, “Life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.”47 The problem with desire in today’s world is twofold: Desires tend to be superficial and demand immediate satisfaction. Most of us do not know our deepest desires or mistake unfulfilled wants for deeper longings. Unfulfilled wants lead to unbridled wants, and we find ourselves yearning after things we don’t really want or need. What we fail to realize in our consumer culture is that desire is not meant to be controlled by fulfillment; rather, desire is the most honest indicator of what our lives are about. Desire is born of the Spirit and thus is God’s gift to us, luring us into the fullness of life. Desire is not born of need but of grace. That is why desire is the pulse of our lives because it is the pulse of our hearts. Desire directs our lives in their deepest longings. If our desires are misguided, so too, will the choices of our lives be misguided. Desire requires honest, attentive listening to our inner hearts where we discover what we hope for and what will transform our lives.

Desire awakens us every morning of a new day. Choosing God is a daily act of desire when our hearts are directed toward God; each moment of our lives must be a choice for God. It may seem unreasonable to choose God at every moment when our lives are filled with many things: things to think about, things to do. How do we attain “God-centeredness” instead of “self-centeredness”? The saints who are the holy ones of God indicate to us that the only way to “God-centeredness” is through practice. We must learn to “practice God.” This is another way of saying that we need a “God-consciousness,” which comes about through prayer, breathing in God, and a mindfulness of God, which expresses itself in love. Spirituality is a transformation of consciousness from self-consciousness toward God-consciousness, that is, toward a divine Other to whom we belong and in whom we find our fulfillment. We might describe the spiritual life as refocusing our ego toward God—the “I” of the self is no longer centered in the self but in God. When we “practice God” daily we live discerning lives; we live with an inner peace or consolation, knowing that times of desolation are times of trial or signals to orient ourselves to God in a new direction. Discernment becomes integral to the daily practice of loving like God when we begin to harvest the wheat of our lives even though weeds may still grow within us. God becomes part and parcel

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