The Hungry Heart
To Serve in Your Name
He who is lost in his passion is less lost than he who has lost his passion. - attributed to St. Augustine
St. Augustine of Hippo was no stranger to the struggle of human urges and passions of the flesh. Young Augustine fathered a child with a woman he never married. He abandoned her and his Catholic faith, imprisoned by his lust and sexual immorality. St. Ambrose helped Augustine find freedom and baptized him after an incredible conversion of heart. In his great work, Confessions, St. Augustine writes extensively about the power of human desire, for good or evil. This brilliant thinker, passionate leader, and Doctor of the Church understood the cry of every human heart, a deep longing. In this discussion, I am going to use desires, passions, and dreams interchangeably.
“The things that we love tell us what we are.” Saint Thomas Aquinas
Our desires not only reveal what we value, but also our irreplaceability and the purpose for which God has created us. When disordered, like young Augustine, we can become a prisoner to our passions and desires. However, when we repress the desires of our heart, or lose sight of what inspires us, we risk being even more lost than the sinner. Like many other things, our culture has taken passion, desires, and dreams to two dangerous extremes.
Secular and anti-Christian culture teaches the destructive lie that you are what you feel. In a world of relativism, what matters is not objective truth but an obligation only to your inner desires. Consequences and moral standards don’t matter so long as your passions are indulged and your desires make you feel good. This is the argument of the transgender and pro-abortion activists.
The other extreme distortion we encounter is the absence or repression of desire. There are a few reasons why one may fall into this camp but I think the bottom line is fear. Giving in to disordered desires in our past may have led to shameful behavior. As we broke free from the bondage of our sin, instead of reordering our desire, we may have subconsciously associated our desire with shame. We might run from our dreams out of fear because of limiting beliefs. It would be a limiting belief to think all dancers and dance studios are immodest therefore I should not pursue dancing as a hobby or career. Finally, we may have stopped dreaming because of past failures or disappointments. I dreamed of going to law school. In 2018 I took the LSAT, got accepted to my top schools, and was offered great scholarships, but life happened and it didn’t work out at that time. I didn’t want to dream again for a while, but God’s timing is always perfect. Trying to complete a law degree in 2020-2021 would have been less than ideal. Instead, we now have 2 more beautiful children and new dreams.
#babies and dreams - Leah Darrow
It is easy to fall into the trap that dreaming is selfish and contradictory to being Christian. We might have been told that we cannot dream and also discern God’s calling for us. This is a lie. God planted the seeds of your desires in your heart, gave you a deep longing for purpose, and created you with unique passions. He desires that you use those passions to co-create and work toward your dreams with Him to fulfill your purpose. What if Harrison Butker believed he couldn’t play football in the NFL because money and fame could corrupt his beliefs? Or Amy Coney Barrett felt that she needed to leave her law career to stay home with her kids to be a good mom?
There is a universal longing in all of our hearts for a purpose and for what is good, beautiful, and true. Christianity is an invitation to fulfill that longing for eternity in Heaven. Sometimes our longing fuels disordered desires. Sometimes we reduce our faith to a list of rules and completely suppress our longing. But how can God satisfy our hungry hearts if we aren’t hungry? We have been created for a purpose, given gifts and desires, and it is up to us to run after the dreams God has laid out for us with hearts on fire just like St. Augustine.
As each one has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God’s varied grace. - 1 Peter 4:10
I know your works; I know that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. - Revelation 3: 15-16