Blessed to Attain Our Deepest Desire

Here is what lies behind it: man must notice and feel that the longing for sun, for happiness, is only the foreground; that it is his affliction to hunger for something more. There is no earthly event, power, or love that can bring peace to man's heart. There are ­promises about mankind: above and beyond all your wishes and ideas, what counts is that the Lord has consecrated you and created you for an intimacy with God that no eye has seen and no ear has heard (1 Co 2:9). We are ­designed for this.

This should be our first Advent light: to understand everything, all that happens to us and all that threatens us, from the perspective of life's character of waiting. The character of life is to keep going, to keep a lookout, and to endure until the vigilant heart of man and the heart of God who meets us come together: presently in the true interior meeting in the sacraments, and later in the final homecoming. God enters only his own rooms, where someone is always keeping watch for him. Are we living out of the centre of our being, or from memory, from impulses, but not because we are settled in the centre of reality and find our stability nourished there? This is the deeper sense of Advent: that we scrutinise this centre, little by little, and set up lights of recognition in our lives, and from the centre master life's gloominess.

There is no absolute darkness. Those who really wait on the Lord God will not be disappointed.