CRAVINGS
[continued from yesterday]
...At once we are troubled and distressed. We compare our present state with our last and discover what we call a falling off. We cannot help making the contrast, and it needs both effort and understanding not to draw a seemingly obvious conclusion.
If once we prayed well, and now the least prayer is a weary labour, we presume that this proves our own shortcomings. If before we could record daily victories, and now we have nothing but defeats, this we take as dear evidence that we are wholly wanting.
If now we are obsessed on every side with temptations of every nature and once we had sailed into the open sea with nothing but a straight course before us, we tell ourselves that we have gone back. Our heart becomes more hungry than ever. Having once tasted "how sweet is the Lord," it can never be satisfied with anything less; and it takes its dissatisfaction for an evil sign.
In reality it is the opposite. A hungry heart is, as we have said, the foundation of a saintly heart; it is the heart that is settled and contented, that kills its cravings and satisfies its hunger with the husks that lie about, it is such a heart that should make us uneasy. And God so loves a hungry heart that He will stir the hunger in a hundred ways. One of these is to give it just a taste of "the things that are more excellent," and then to take tbem away. Let us not be mistaken; let us not misinterpret ourselves; let us rejoice that we are made so to "hunger and thirst after justice, for we shall have our fill!"
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From The School of Love and Other Essays
by The Most Reverend Alban Goodier, S.J.
Burns, Oates, & Washburn, Ltd. 1918
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