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Msgr. Peter Magee, St. Matthew’s Cathedral,
Washington, Sunday January 26th, 2003
Everyone wants to be wanted as he/she is; needs to be needed as he/she is; desires to be desired as he/she is; loves
to be loved as he/she is. The root of much anxiety and even worse conditions of the human spirit can often be traced back
to the perception, sometimes tragically mistaken, that one is not wanted, needed, desired or loved for one’s own sake.
Abuse, manipulation, mistreatment fill our news bulletins every day. And sometimes, deep within us too, although it is painful
to admit it, there can often lie a great doubt as to whether we ourselves are really worth anything. We can be inclined to
think too negatively of ourselves, focusing almost exclusively on the words of God’s curse to Adam: “For dust
you are, and to dust you shall return”.
But when Adam and Eve made their exit from Eden, although it was out of just
punishment for their sin, that just punishment never meant that God ever stopped loving them. It meant rather that the sincere
acceptance of God’s love and the search for God’s own acceptance of them required, on their part, a real change
in the depths of their hearts. You cannot sincerely say on the one hand, “Lord accept me as I am”, and then, on
the other, make no effort whatsoever to stop sinning, to stop hurting Him. And as long as you fail to make that effort, you
will experience the emptiness of not feeling wanted, needed, desired, or loved by God. That experience is born not out of
the truth, for in fact God does indeed want, desire you, etc.. Rather it is born out of a lie, the lie of sin, the lie of
self-sufficiency, the tortuous trap of pride and its fascinating illusion of power.
The Lord knows our self-inflicted torture; He hears our cries; He knows the stupidity of the self-contradiction in
which we entangle ourselves; He knows the deep need we have to be restored to our true dignity. That is why Mark’s Gospel
begins with two words or phrases of Jesus which are actually two sides of the same coin: Repent! And Come follow me! These
are the two inseparable phases of the return to everlasting love and peace.
Repent! This word has become almost annoying for us. It even makes us whine and squirm and moan like children being
told to stop gorging their faces with candy. “I don’t want to stop sinning - I enjoy it too much!”
But, at root, the call to repentance is the call of God to Adam and Eve to return to Eden, to turn
around and come home. It is the divine desire to have us back. When I repent, I accept once more that God’s desire,
need, love of me are greater than the false desires, needs and loves with which, in vain, I seek to satisfy myself. Repentance
is a shaking off of the cumbersome entanglements in which I have become entrapped, so as to let my heart and soul be free
and run freely in their thirst and hunger back to the arms of God. And those arms are near in Jesus who does not simply embrace
us, but admits us into His Kingdom, His Heart.
But repentance requires honesty, real honesty: a clear recognition and admission of the futility of the God-substitutes
(idols) we have invented for ourselves; an effective willingness to be rid of that futility in the sacramental confession
of our sins; and the humble recognition that there is no substitute for our great and glorious God and that our hearts literally
need to adore Him. Repentance leads to the satisfying food of adoration, for in Christ we have the only One who can fulfil
those deep needs I spoke of at the beginning:: to be wanted unconditionally, to be desired unconditionally, to be needed unconditionally
and to be loved unconditionally. Repentance is the doorway to the complete flourishing of all that we are, because we only
ever are all that we are when we are in Christ.
The other side of that coin was the word of Jesus: Come! Follow me! To the heart that is yearning for a sense of direction
and purpose, to belong and to be part of something greater than itself, this call of Jesus, however faintly the heart may
hear it, stirs deep within it the excitement of hope. When you hear the voice of someone you love call your name, especially
if there has been a time of absence, it invades your very soul like a powerful force and leads you to drop everything, to
abandon all other thoughts and feelings, all other activities. All you want to do is respond with choking tenderness: Yes,
my love, I am here. Each of us was created by God. There is a psalm which, when referring to God the Creator of the world,
says: “North and South shout with joy at your name; the mountains themselves exult at your presence”. In all that
God has created, but especially in the depth of every human soul there is a special ear that waits to hear the voice of God,
of the Beloved Savior. And when you hear it saying: “Come! Follow me!” it reassures and gives you the certainty,
not only that God has not forgotten you, but that He is coming looking for you to share in His life, to walk His way, to follow
Him in whatever vocation or mission He gives you. The human heart was not created for nothingness; nor was it created to be
broken in pieces or wounded with pain and hurt. The human heart is the masterpiece of God’s creation, created by the
unspeakable tenderness of His Divine Compassion and destined to hold nothing less than God Himself. If we follow Christ, he
will lead us home to our own hearts, for that is where He, the Father and the Spirit wish to dwell. By calling all hearts
to follow him, Jesus is the magnetic force that draws them all together. No heart is created for emptiness, but to be filled
with the love, not just even of God, but with the love of all those who love God.
Repent! Come and follow me! Two words of Jesus which constitute the entire program of our journey away from the darkness
and emptiness of evil and towards the Light and fullness of the Goodness of God. It is difficult to know if Peter and Andrew,
James and John, in the din of their work heard the voice of Jesus at first. Perhaps they had been talking with Him before.
What is certain is that the voice of Jesus was so able to penetrate their bodily ears and that special ear of their
hearts that they, almost as if controlled by the power of His call, left the entanglement of their nets, left even their livelihood
and families and followed Him. That same voice of Jesus the Lord calls out every moment to every human being: as in the case
of Francis of Assisi, or St. Anthony of the Desert or Ignatius of Loyola, that voice seems sometimes to have a riveting quality
which almost violently interrupts the directions of their lives and brings them to a new path of holiness.
I, in my own heart, have in key moments of my life heard this voice, not in a physical, audible sense, but in the silence
of the night or of prayer or of suffering. And I have felt the burning fire of excitement and hope that has often drawn me
out of the kind of spiritual sluggishness or fatigue that can come upon us all. I have known the tears of joy of realizing,
in a way that is difficult to describe, that He has come so close to me and called me so clearly to repent and to follow Him.
There are reasons of the heart, says Pascal, that only the heart understands. Somewhere in there is the explanation of this
deep, personal call of Jesus to each of us.
When Our Lady and St. Joseph were both spoken to by the Angel Gabriel about the coming of Jesus, I like to think that
it was at this deep level of their hearts that they welcomed the voice of God’s messengers but also at that level
at which they responded in obedient action to his call. As sinners, Christ’s voice sweetly but strongly calls us first
to repentance and then to the obedient action of following Him. In this way, we become imitators of the many saints who have
surrendered themselves unconditionally to the divine desire for their love.
No man is an island. No heart is inaccessible to Jesus. Take time, my friends, in the quiet silence of the night or
any other time, to allow the voice of Jesus to be heard deep within you; listen and act upon his call to repentance and discipleship;
for if you do, there will come an end to your inner suffering and doubt and you will know personally with indestructible certainty
that God wants you unconditionally, desires you unconditionally, needs you unconditionally and loves you unconditionally.
Give your heart a chance to know the greatness of its destiny and the unspeakable greatness of the Lord who so loves you.
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