DESIRING AND LOVING

St. Anselm (1033-1109) wrote:
“Lord, let me seek you in desiring you and desire you in seeking you, find you in loving you and love you in finding you.”

These terms can play off of each other…seeking, desiring, finding and loving. It is desirable but not imperative to seek without desire and to find without loving. This can happen when religion replaces true spiritual inquiry with habitual tradition. It can even become convenient for the seeker not to find, and not to love… so the excuse of ‘still looking’ and ‘still working it out’ can play to some kind of distorted advantage for that person. This often works out to a kind of ‘I am not responsible for what I don’t know’ logic.

The simplicity of St Anselm of desiring you in seeking you and loving you in finding you is a much purer approach than to philosophize and yap about it.

It is as the apostle Paul wrote to Timothy: “they are always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.”

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” Jesus