Desire

          Today I am reflecting on another lesson that I share with teens on retreat.  Our parish includes a pre-K through 8th grade school, and as our students were preparing to graduate from the school and enter high school, I conducted a retreat for them.  The purpose of this retreat is threefold:  1. to reflect on their school experience thus far in order to learn from them as they move further along in their education,  2. to discuss the anticipations and apprehensions associated with changing over to high school, and 3. to be grateful for the blessing of their education thus far.

          During the entire course of the retreat over the many years that I have done them, I have never had even one student remark that one thing they are looking forward to in their move to high school is to learn more.  Their responses always included their desire for more sports, band, better food, new people, dances, etc.  It usually leads to my informing the students that the purpose for going to school is to learn, and we are only truly fulfilled, if we have a desire to learn.  Without that purpose, we leave school each day wanting more, when there is no more.

          God showed me that we do the very same thing with family life.  I must confess that I do not desire each day to do laundry, clean, cook, and take care of the multitude of needs in managing a family.  My demeanor can reflect that I must do these things, not that I want to and desire to. It's the same for going off to employment.  Many employees display the attitude that they are there because they need to provide for their family but they don't desire to be there.  There were many times that a family would arrive on a family retreat, and invariably there was one person in the family who was not a happy camper, and not afraid to let us know that they did not want to be there and there was nothing we could do to make him/her enjoy it. 

          The purpose of life is to live.  Our desire each day should be to live well in whatever capacity we find ourselves. God is alive and that is the Good News.  We are alive and that is good news!  It shouldn't matter so much as to what we find ourselves doing as long as we do it with a love for living.  Life has a lot of disappointments because we want so much more out of life than just living well.  Jesus had to come to earth to show us how to live, and if we live Jesus, we will desire to do whatever is life-giving. 

          Cooking, cleaning, taking care of our family, going to work, praying, going on retreat, loving, marital sex without contraception, forgiving, volunteering, giving alms, are all life-giving and what being alive is all about.  The gift of life is so mysterious.  When everything is well, we want more, and yet, when an illness/addiction occurs and we find a loved one fighting for their life, we just desire to live life well.  Let's value life and every person in it, especially in our family, and be grateful for the opportunity to live Jesus in our world.  Living life to its fullest purpose is to desire to live well no matter where we find ourselves. 

"Live, Jesus!"  (Motto and theme of St. Francis deSales' writings and life work.  Also used by the Knights of Columbus and many other organizations.)

"Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life;"  (John 14:6)