ardent longing

I listened to this song recently and I found it to be so captivating that it led me to deep prayer. It is a “secular” song, meaning it is not “Christian”…but I find it to have a deep Christian meaning. This artist is so raw and vulnerable and clearly wounded and he seems to be searching for authentic truth and beauty. He is yearning and longing. The way he sings and his passion make me feel a sort of mysticism.

I couldn’t help but close my eyes and meditate on the beauty of the words and how this song led my soul to yearn for God.

Like the Psalms say:

O God, you are my God—
    it is you I seek!
For you my body yearns;
    for you my soul thirsts,
In a land parched, lifeless,
    and without water.
 I look to you in the sanctuary
    to see your power and glory.
 For your love is better than life;
    my lips shall ever praise you!

I will bless you as long as I live;
    I will lift up my hands, calling on your name.
 My soul shall be sated as with choice food,
    with joyous lips my mouth shall praise you!
 I think of you upon my bed,
    I remember you through the watches of the night
 You indeed are my savior,
    and in the shadow of your wings I shout for joy.
 My soul clings fast to you;
    your right hand upholds me.

There are always words in the bible that make you giggle or make you blush because you wouldn’t think that those words would be used in the context of God (ex: Song of Songs).

How intimate of a relationship we have with God that our body yearns?!

My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.

My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you.

Intimacy and God in the same sentence always made me very uncomfortable before I understood what it really means. I believed intimacy was only between a husband and wife because I associated intimacy only with sex. Someone explained the word intimacy to me like this: “into-me-see.” So one person knows you in such a real way that they can see into you and truly know you. You see me and I see you. (Just read up on some of St. JPII’s Theology of the Body and your face will be blown off and you’ll believe you were actually bff’s with JPII your whole life.)

“Human persons are made for self-giving love, not a self-getting love, and they will find fulfillment only when they give themselves in service to others.”

“Man and woman are made to live in an intimate personal communion of self-giving love, mirroring the inner life of the Trinity.”

“Seeing each other, as if through the mystery of creation, man and woman see each other even more fully and distinctly than through the sense of sight itself. . . . They see and know each other with all the peace of the interior gaze, which creates precisely the fullness of the intimacy of persons”

Most importantly, in this song I imagine Mary waiting for her Son, the Savior of the world, not only waiting patiently for His birth, but especially the excruciating waiting after His death. The lyrics settle in my soul as Mary just hurting for her baby.

“The Virgin Mary is the greatest among creatures because she responded to God with her pure fiat, a total cooperation that intimately involved all of her being. Everything that Mary did she did with her body.”

“The most intimate relationship between a divine Body-Person and a human body-person ensued between this mother and her Son who is also God’s own Son. Such is what appears to be meant by those in our Christian Tradition who favor enriching Mary’s concrete motherhood of Christ with bridal symbolism and imagery. Not to be interpreted literally in its sexual connotations, still it does emphasize the intimate union between the divine and the human which took place within Mary’s body . . . ”

 

Well, now that I have given you a plethora of quote from the Bible and different Theology of the Body sources, here is the song for you to pray with and interpret as you wish:

“Lay Me Down” by Sam Smith https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVJcLcuQdOw

 

I pray that I can have an unfathomable longing for God. That when I am in the business and chaos of life I am constantly remembering and missing God those quiet moments with Him. I pray that I have an authentic hurt when I feel distant from God. That even when I am in my bed asleep, I remember Him through the night. I pray that I can be like Mary, so intimately in union with the Trinity as the perfect Bride of Christ, even though I am a part of the Church which is the perfectly-imperfect Bride of Christ.