(from an August 4, 1985 homily)

It has been said that a man is what he desires or loves, and although it is only partly true, nevertheless, there is no doubt that our lives get their direction and increasing color from our desires.  Since God has given us the remarkable gift of free will by which we make choices and come to practical decisions, it is obvious that we must necessarily have desires or aims or goals.  It is a complete misunderstanding of Christian detachment to equate it with an attitude of uninterested indifference.  Detachment is a Christian virtue, but it is detachment from our own desires in order to attach ourselves firmly to the things God wants us to desire.  So St. Paul tells us . . . that we must give up our old way of life, put aside our old self, which gets corrupted by following illusory desires.  No matter how perfect we may already be, we still have a very long way to go along the road to newness of life, and to follow the way that leads ever closer to God we have to change things in our life.

St. Paul . . . is not telling us to change this or that practice, or alter that custom, or take up this or that devotion.  He urges us to a very real change of outlook, a change of mind.  “Your mind must be renewed by a spiritual revolution so that you can put on the new self that has been created in God’s way, in the goodness and holiness of truth.”  The new self created in God’s way in the goodness and holiness of truth does not have illusory desires, nor is it frustrated by the absence of the things God does not want it to have.  If we have no desires at all contrary to God’s will and God’s providence, then we cannot help being perfectly at peace. . .

There is only one desire that God wants us to have.  He wants us to desire Him.  That overriding desire should determine every other desire we have and should make us have no desire whatever for anything that separates us from God or slows up our approach ever closer to Him. . . This is quite beyond our powers.  We cannot do anything of ourselves to bring it about.  But, of course, God sent His Son to us, and through Him and with Him and in Him we can be entirely renewed if we want to.

How do we get help from Our Lord in this spiritual revolution that we need?  We can receive His grace and influence in all sorts of ways, but there is one central and quite indispensable way.  We have got to have a very great hunger and desire for the Bread of Life. . .

We must have such a desire to receive this Bread of Life that we willingly control or suppress any desires that will make us less able to receive It or less fit to receive It or less open to be renewed by a spiritual revolution from the nourishment It gives. . .

Jesus said that He had come to us to give us life and give it more abundantly.  The life He meant was His own life infused into us, supernatural life, the life of adopted children of God.  And it is a fact that we receive Holy Communion precisely in order to be nourished on the Bread of Life, the Bread that produces life in us, that produces Jesus’ life in us. . .
Our desire for Holy Communion, which should be the greatest and most constant desire of our whole life, should be for Him to take over our life, to change us into Himself.  We ought to want Communion not just as an embrace or visit from Jesus but as a divine food, Bread from Heaven, which gives us not just the Person of Jesus on a visit but His very life . . . a new life.

The Bread of Life is the true Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ.  It is an infallibly effective food to give us new life, but we can put a block in the way of Its full effect if we have desires of the wrong kind or if we have not really got the desire to be changed by a spiritual revolution. . .

In our [reception of] Holy Communion . . . let us ask Jesus to give us the true Life, His Life, so that we may live It.  That is the meaning of holiness, and it is Holy Communion that we receive.