Back to the Basics

For nine years of my life, I took piano lessons. I loved it and frankly, I was really good at playing it in those last few years. But when I entered my freshman year of high school, I decided that I no longer wanted to play because of my busy schedule--and my unjustified embarrassment at still taking piano lessons. Last night, I went to my parents' house for dinner and afterwards felt compelled to walk upstairs and play a few songs. With optimism that I could just sit down and recall all that I had once learned, I pulled out the sheet music for songs that had been my most favorite pieces. And though there were moments of brilliance where I hit every note, the majority of my time spent playing was a choppy, disarrayed version of songs I had once played so beautifully.

I sat for a few moments afterwards and wondered how talented I could have been if I would have continued to play. My heart ached with a desire to be good at playing the piano again. I had loved it and I wanted to re-learn it. But I knew that to do this was going to require me to go back to the basics, to re-learn what I had once known.

At that moment, I was utterly humbled as I recognized how relevant this experience is to my faith and perhaps to yours. Though there are moments of brilliance where I trust God completely and truly seek a relationship with him, much of my life has been a disarrayed version of the life God wants me to have. And when I come to a place where I recognize this reality and actually begin to reflect on how much better my life is with him, I feel my heart aching for him to make me good and whole and fulfilled. But just as I am not going to get better at playing the piano by wallowing in regret and ceasing to practice, my relationship with God is not going to be strengthened if I focus on my failures and reject the mercy he offers. I must let him re-teach me the basics.

And the basic truth of our faith is expressed so beautifully in the Catechism of the Catholic Church in which it states that "The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for". God wants us to have our desires met in him. He who created us with dignity and purpose and love wants to draw us ever closer to himself in an 'intimate and vital bond'. He wants to transform us by grace. He wants us to find truth, happiness, and fulfillment in him. This is the life God wants for us. But the Catechism also states that this "intimate and vital bond of man to God can be forgotten, overlooked, or even explicitly rejected by man".

So the question today is how have we forgotten, overlooked, or explicitly rejected this life he desires for us? Do we seek to have our desires met in things or people other than God? Have we ceased to see the vitality found by being bonded with him? Have we sought truth and happiness in every other thing outside of him?

Perhaps the more important question is will we be humble enough to go back to the basics and allow him to show us the life he wants for us? Today let us ask for the grace to allow him to penetrate our hearts and infiltrate our minds to rekindle in us this deep-seated yearning for him. Let us beg the Holy Spirit to show us the ways our lives have become disarrayed and broken versions of the life God desires for us. And may we run to Christ, in prayer and Sacrament, seeking to re-learn the basic truth of our lives--that we are restless until we rest in him.