As a starter, if you read the selection from The First Letter of John in today’s liturgy and the words of Jesus quoted in the gospel, you will see immediately that the theme of these post-Easter liturgies is love.

When I first read them, I said to myself, I wish they would define it for me or, at least, tell me in what context they are using the word. But, you see, they just throw the word out there and assume that we all know what they are talking about, that we all have the same definition for it. That’s frustration, at least for me, because it means that I have to search for the meaning for myself and hope I am not interpreting Jesus’ use of the word wrongly.

At any rate, let me start this way: As I was sitting in the sun on our back patio, jotting down some notes to get started with this homily, I was listening to a beautiful song by Anne Murray on my Ipod. It is entitled: “Life, don’t run out on me.” So, I stopped for a moment and said, “Hey, maybe that’s it; maybe we spend our whole life, from the first breath we take until 2 minutes before we die, longing for that one thing in life that will mean something to us, something I would describe as our heart’s desire. And throughout our entire life, then, we struggle to realize that one thing, hoping that life and time will not run out on us.

Think about this: The tiniest baby longs for the mother’s breast,’ that’s its ultimate desire; the five year old wants its own way. The teenager longs for the girl or boy who will be his heart’s desire, at least for this week. The young man or woman goes to college, hoping to secure a six-figure job when he or she graduates, that’s the hearts desire? He or she ultimately marries the one who will complement the other. Bernie Madoff and lots of others swindle millions of people out of their savings, imagining that this money could end up being their heart’s desire. Now some are in prison, too bad.

Finally, we reach old age and we know that death is closer than we ever imagined it could be. There is nothing more to long for and yet, is it not true, that no one longs to die. (As Zorba the Greek says in Kazantzakis novel: “A man like me should live forever.” Do not each one of us want to live forever or at least as long as we can, in case there is just one more possibility that could fulfill our heart’s desire?

The interesting and mysterious point in all this is that none of us really and ultimately understands what we are searching for; we do not understand our heart’s desire; hence we keep searching throughout life, moving from one false start to another.

I have often wondered if any of us will ever die fully happy, fully satisfied and convinced that we have now realized our heart’s desire.

You may say: What’s all this have to do with love? Well, this is no definitive answer, obviously, but love seems to be that element in human life that directs us to something that will satisfy us, give us full happiness, ultimate gratification.

The huge dilemma, however, is this: The human soul is never satisfied. This temporary human object of my love will never be enough. The soul is always hungry for more, whatever “more” is.

I don’t know if there is any solution to this longing, but my sense is that if we can manage throughout our life to direct our longing to the other, to that other person or cause rather imagining that we can ultimately satisfy ourselves, perhaps that would be enough.

I think that is why Jesus is such a beautiful example of this: His whole life, all he said, all he did, all he died for was done for us, for the human race. He had no selfish, personal intent. He lived and died for us…the other.

I am even confident enough to say that Jesus was probably the only person in the world’s history who died happily. Hanging on the cross, he had finally found his heart’s desire.

So, then, weak as we humans are, distracted as we are by worldly desires, it might be well occasionally to ask ourselves whether this one achievement, this moment in our personal history is what we are ultimately searching for and in which we will find fulfillment. My hunch is that we will probably go on wondering about all this until the Lord calls us to our final heart’s desire, his kingdom where love is all there is.

The Scriptures: Acts 10: 25-26; 1 John 5: 1-6; John 15: 9-17