For Meditation: teach me how to want

"Most of the time, I don’t know what it is that I really want. I don’t know what it is I’m seeking. I hope that I am seeking Jesus of Nazareth, but it may well be that I’m seeking him more for my own complacent self-congratulation than because I actually want him, as he is, in all his terrifying radiance. I need him to teach me how to want, what to want, whom to want. Bartimaeus wanted to see so that he could follow him. The first disciples wanted to know where he stayed so they could abide with him. But Mary seems to suggest that you’re not really seeking him as you ought until you’ve acknowledged that you don’t know how, until you’ve wept for your sins and for the sins of the world that put to death its own light. The psalms tell me to “seek his face evermore” (Ps. 105:4). But Mary shows me that I will only be able to see his face through my tears … tears which, of course, he himself will wipe away."

 Mac Stewart, What Do You Seek? Covenant, 5 Feb. 2016.