The Heart's Desire Is More Than the Universe
16th Sunday of the Year
As the world has stood in wonder for the past few days at the images received from the James Webb Telescope and marveled at the magnificent grandeur of the deepest recesses of the universe they have unveiled, I can’t help but think of poor old Abraham sitting in the heat of the day by the entrance to his tent.
When the Lord told Abraham to “Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can,” (Gen. 15:5), he promised that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars he could count. I wonder if the old Patriarch had any sense of the scope of the promise the Lord had made to him – a promise which we now see better than ever before. Admittedly, for a man nearly one hundred years old, with a barren wife and no child of their own, even the scant number of stars that are visible in the night sky over a modern city would have seemed to be a bar set too high for his lineage. What, then, would Abraham have thought of the Lord’s promise considering the 200 billion trillion stars that we can now look to the sky and ‘count’?
We must certainly take God’s promise that Abraham’s number of descendants would equal the number of the stars as a metaphor – as an evocative and poetic way of describing the abundant faithfulness of Abraham’s progeny in the generations to come. 200 billion trillion people simply seems too much for this world to sustain. But we should not mistake the reason why God’s promise is a metaphor. It is not a metaphor because the literal fulfillment far exceeds the promise but because the promise far exceeds everything else. For in light of God’s full revelation in Jesus Christ, what God truly promised Abraham is that from him, “our father in faith”, would be born not merely men and women of the human species but sons and daughters of God the Father Almighty. And this new birth in the order of grace through water and the Holy Spirit so immeasurably surpasses birth in the order of nature that even a single star in all its splendor pales in comparison with the single human person who rises from the waters of baptism as a new creation. For whoever is “in Christ” already carries within themselves the seed of the new heaven and the new earth, the “hope of glory”, and when this new reality comes fully to blossom, all that came before it, however marvelous, will seem like dust.
That he would be the father of the countless multitude that will sing the new creation’s eternal song of praise was not something Abraham, sitting at the entrance of his tent in the opening pages of salvation history could have comprehended. Although he does not know what this promise means or how God planned to fulfill it, Abraham nevertheless remains open to receive what God has to give him.
Within his heart exists a desire, and although he does not – and perhaps cannot – conceptualize or articulate that desire with any precision, something deep within Abraham responds to the God who comes close to him and visits his house in the three divine persons veiled in the three mysterious guests; and the response of his heart is to fall to the ground in worship. Already Abraham intuits that God’s visitation to his house carries with it a blessing; and in anticipation of that blessing, without allowing his concerns to make speculations about its character, he goes, in the manner of an Italian grandmother, supposedly to prepare “a little food” and “some water” but in reality fixes a lavish feast in thanksgiving for whatever God is about to do.
All of Abraham’s person responds to the encounter with God, for whenever God speaks, he speaks to the heart, and if the person to whom God speaks receives that word in faith, his word will not fail to fill the person’s deepest need. Martha and Mary likewise knew that God, who they believed to be present in the person of Jesus, had come to visit their home, and thus do they go about attending to him. Martha, for her part, must certainly have had the story of Abraham and his divine guests in mind when Christ came into her home, and for this reason does she burden herself with much serving to provide a feast suitable for her divine guest. But while Martha does not hesitate to ready her house for Christ, her anxieties and preoccupations distract her from preparing the room in heart where Christ wants more than anywhere else to make the seat of his friendship. Martha’s Guest calls her higher through Mary, who “has chosen the better part,” as her sister has not only made Christ the Guest of her home but has welcomed him as the Guest of her heart. Indeed, she has let him become one with her, and that is the truest definition of friendship. As a friend of Christ, Mary sits silently “at his feet listening to him speak,” for she does not need to speak her heart’s desires to her friend. He knows them and speaks directly to them with the only words capable of satisfying them.
Both our heart and Christ’s desire to dwell mutually within the other. Unlike these friends of Christ, however, his point of entry into our heart is not through our home but through his. He has not visited our tent in the middle of the day or come looking for respite after a long journey. No, his friendship has turned the tables. He has brought us into his home, into his own Body, the Church, where he does not allow us to wait on him, but he, as the one among us who serves, lavishes upon us the fullest bounty of his love and thus demonstrates for us the sincerity of his friendship. By baptism he has already brought us into his home, but now he stands at the door of our heart and knocks that we might allow him to enter, to make the seat of his friendship that place within us that is most personally “ours” – what we call the depth of our heart. And when Christ is welcomed there, Christ’s friend becomes all he desires them to be; and, as a result, anything less than that friendship, even the stars in their grandeur, become as straw in light of the ever-great gift of divine love given and received. For this reason, welcoming Christ into one’s heart is truly the one thing that is necessary.
Every heart reaches out toward Christ to find its fulfillment. Yet for many this yearning remains still shrouded, as Paul once described, “in the mystery hidden from ages and from generations past.” Even less than the stars know their maker and the planets know their ruler, the world does not know its Redeemer and human hearts have not fallen in love with their true Spouse. Yet his Heart does not cease to yearn for theirs, and thus does it fall to us, as his friends and members of his Body to say with Paul: “It is he whom we proclaim” that friendship with Christ would perfect everyone, even the number of the countless multitude of the stars.
The degree to which we are effective in proclaiming that friendship with Christ is the one thing necessary that completes every desire of the human heart depends entirely on the degree to which we have embraced his friendship for ourselves. We have to learn, like Martha, to value and cultivate the habit of setting everything aside to sit in faithful attention to hear the word of Christ that speaks to our heart. We need not worry or be concerned about how Christ will bless us. We need only be silent and receive with open hearts what his love has promised from before time began to give us – a promise older than even the stars.
Only when we have taken Mary’s place will we recognize our true need, the need in the depth of our heart for “only one thing”, the need for Christ himself. And when this desire has been awakened and its fulfillment has begun to be realized through his friendship, nothing in the universe will satisfy in the slightest. For what we desire more than anything is that which is more than anything; and our heart will not settle for anything less than the friendship by which it is filled.
We have come to see, as never before, the deepest recesses of this universe; but may God in his mercy allow us to see now, as never before, the length and breadth, the heigh and depth, and the deepest recesses of the love which made the sun and the other stars and which alone makes us who we truly are.
Homily preached July 16th, 2022 at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, Baltimore.