“Whatever That Is, I Want That”

 I was watching a beautiful conversion story this afternoon of a post-abortive woman who was homeless at age 16 and who had no exposure or knowledge of God or Jesus Christ. When she observed her daughter (who went to a Catholic school) kneeling at her bed and praying, this woman’s spirit was moved and she said to herself, “whatever that is, I want that.”

For those of us who have come to the Faith from the outside looking in, it often starts with a gnawing for authenticity, love, peace, and a well to draw from that never dries up. For me, it was encountering a largish Catholic family, with a picture of the Sacred Heart on their wall (the first time I had seen such an image of Christ), who knew their identity and had something I couldn’t put my finger on. It was something I wanted and didn’t have.

I think this is really the rootstock of many conversions. If God is a lover of men, he draws us to a foreign love by means of attraction. And peace, goodness, trustworthiness...these are attractive features of Love itself, seeking consummation in the soul it draws. When one tip-toes toward it, and eventually becomes inebriated by Love itself as a all-encompassing, tidal force mist, we realize what we have been seeking our whole lives without knowing it was there all along, wanting to be found.

Our Lady too is a “beautiful Lady.” She attracts us by her goodness, her maternal care, her peace. She is not harsh or unsightly. We want what she has—which is Christ himself, her own flesh—and she leads us to him by way of attraction. 

When we knock, God answers, as scripture says. He who seeks will find. Divine Love is not gnostic in nature, reserved for only a few. It makes itself attractive because virtue and goodness is attractive by its very nature and is true to that nature. It wants to be wanted, pines for completion—to give a restless heart rest, to make it whole. 

Sometimes we don’t know what we really, really want until we see it somewhere—as in a passing glance at the elusive peace a child seems to easily possess while kneeling at her bedside in prayer, or a family that loves one another. But that love and peace...it comes from somewhere. It attracts and draws one out, as in a honeymoon—slowly from the shadows, until it can capture it completely with a commitment to say ‘yes’ to that love, so that whatever that is, that thing we want...it’s no longer hidden but has just waiting to be found this whole time.