Filling Our Ache: Our Longing for God

The ache. That longing. That yearning. What is it for? Why do we experience it? I’ve searched for answers to that question for a few years and I think I finally may have come to an answer by piecing together the insights.

One priest told me during confession that I had a spiritual wideness in me. Another priest told me that my great need for love was actually a gift vs. a stumbling block, and to thank God for it. Then another priest suggested that maybe God was trying to increase my hunger for Him.

Nearly all the priests said something consistent: You have a spiritual longing inside of you that only God can satisfy. What they said stuck with me. I remember their responses and insights, and while I didn’t quite understand what they meant at the time, I think I do now.

My capacity to desire and receive God’s love is wide, and because it’s wide, it must be nurtured more deeply.

Are you similar? Do you have a spiritual wideness? Do you have a great need for love, a need that the things and people of this world are not filling?

Over time, I’ve learned that average amounts of prayer time will not suffice in filling my need for God and the perpetual ache I feel. I need holy hours (or more) each day. I need deeper and more contemplative prayer to be filled. I need to breathe in His love continually all day, every day. I need to consume Him in the Eucharist daily. I need His Divine Mercy touching me continually. I need to constantly be singing songs of praise in my soul. It’s this revelation of my great need for God that has led me to new insights about how God is calling me to respond.

The command to “pray without ceasing” has immense truth in my life, and the more I obey it, the more the spiritual wideness and need for love is filled with God alone.

I recall a contemplative prayer group I went to last fall. The prayer topic was our ache. The insight was that our ache is never completely filled in our lifetime, and that as we mature in our prayer and relationship with God, we learn the surprising ways that it is “mostly filled.”

When I recite Liturgy of the Hours, I’m reminded of that often. The psalms of longing for God repeatedly resound. God knows life on earth means a life of longing for Him until we reach eternity. It’s this longing that pulls us closer to Him, but I do think He wants to show us how we can mostly fill that yearning through everyday communion with Him.

Indeed, I think I have learned, and will continue to learn, the mysterious ways that God wants to fill my ache, and I hope you do as well. And thank you to the priests who pointed me in the right direction.