What
Do You Want?
In
today's Gospel we hear the first words of Jesus recorder in the Gospel
of St John, "What do you want? What is your intention? Why are
you here, why are you doing what you are doing?" The question
of intention is of the greatest importance in all human activity.
Intentionality determines the moral goodness or badness of an action.
An action is bad if I intend to do evil through it. The objective
evil of something that happens may be lessened because I did not intend
evil. Achievement also depends a lot on intention. If I really intend
and desire something I will find ways of achieving it. If my desire
is weak I will give up easily. My intention is my motivation, and
my reason for doing anything - work or prayer - is of the utmost importance
in determining the worth of what I do. St James tells us (4:3) "When
you pray you do not get what you ask because you have not prayed properly,
you have prayed only for things to indulge your own desires."
So Jesus asks the disciples
"What do you want?" and they answer "Where do you live?"
"Come and see," he replied. On the surface this can be taken
as a request to know the house or shelter in which Jesus is physically
staying. But the Gospel of John is usually symbolic of something deeper.
"Where are you staying?" refers more deeply to the inner
consciousness of Jesus. The disciples felt a glimpse of something
deeper in Jesus and they want to share it. Jesus says "Come and
see." Come and share in my inner awareness, in my experience
of reality. In this, Jesus invites them to the inner truth and life
that is in him and comes through him. "They came and saw where
he stayed; and they stayed with him that day." They visited him
physically, but they experienced where he was interiorly and to some
degree shared in his light.
John then adds, "It was
about the tenth hour." This is the number of fulfillment. Then
one of the brothers, Andrew, "found his brother Simon and said
to him, 'we have found the messiah.'"
We have found the one who is full of the Spirit, fully alive. They
went "and saw." Surely this must have been a powerful life
giving experience for the first disciples.
From this story we can see
that Jesus invites us to enlightenment (to become less heavy and less
dark) as the motivation for our following of him. If we follow him
we grow in the way of seeing, in enlightenment, and we finally end
up having no intention. We will find ourselves with no intention other
than being in union in selfless openness. This paradoxically does
not lead to inaction but to a more fruitful, ego-free form of action.
Everyone who takes the spiritual
journey seriously has heard the call to "come and see" Jesus
more deeply. Our intentions starting out may vary. We may want to
appear holy, to conquer fear or lust or anger, to arrive at inner
peace. As we grow closer to the person of Christ our seeing becomes
better and our motivation and intention is purified. We then want
to share this great gift with others.
In my experience the practice
of daily meditation is a transforming way of going home with Jesus.
I too would invite you to come and see. Try to meditate twice daily.
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Taken
from Sundays
into Silence - A Pathway to Life. Copyright © 1998 by Claretian
Publications
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