Another spirituality that people have used to excuse themselves from growing spiritually and finding their true selves is to say that God never wants for us what we want for ourselves, our heart’s desires. When we think this way, however, we are saying that God is against us and not on our side, thus contradicting His own Word (Romans 8:31-32). While it is true that God’s ways are higher than our ways, it is also true that in Baptism God writes His law on our hearts (Jeremiah 31:33) and plants within us the desire to live in goodness and truth (Ezekiel 36:27). These are the deepest desires of our hearts. When we choose not to look at our heart’s desires, we choose not to look at God’s desire for us (Psalms 20:4, 21:2), and we choose not to find our true selves! The pursuit to discover our true selves is critical, I believe, for spiritual growth.

Often we are afraid to look at our deepest desires and to admit what they are. Sometimes, because of the way our society programs us and tries to influence our ways of thinking consciously and unconsciously, some of us fear that our deepest desires will be for something shameful, like promiscuous sexual relations. But in none of us is unlimited sex our deepest desire. Maybe love is. Maybe we desire to give love, to receive love. There are so few ways to express love and affection and sex is one of them, so human beings have often confused the desire for sex with the desire for love. It seems that this is true of our society in general. But if we look deep within ourselves for our heart’s desire we will not find something that would shame us; rather, we will find the traces of God’s handiwork in creating us. Do we believe that we are made in His very image and likeness?

The call to holiness is a call to discover and understand our true selves – the persons God intentionally created