Longing for Him who longs for us

Today's gospel is a revelation of a truth that some think about rarely but which should ideally be our hourly meditation: the longing of God for us. Too often we focus on what we are doing - or failing to do - and there is a grain of truth in that: we must all of us pick up our beds and walk. Nevertheless, what is it that we walk towards if not the open and loving arms of our Father who looks for us, like the father of the Prodigal Son who awaits his return from exile? 

We cannot out-love God in this regard. Jesus tells us to be as perfect as the Father is perfect but not because we can be. What He means is that as God is perfect as God (i.e. it is in the nature of God to be all perfect), so we should strive to be perfect in our own measure - the measure that God calls us to in our own calling. Later in our Holy Mile journey, we will consider the nature of vocation, but we can sum it up in a simple phrase here: our calling is God's dream for us.

Coming back to our gospel today, how do we know what the calling of Jerusalem is (or the vocation of any of us)? Simply by listening to God's longing for it (or for ourselves). How often have I longed to gather your children, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings'. What is God's dream for me? I can only know by asking Him. I can only hear that dream by listening to the Heart that wants to gather me to itself. And I can only embrace that dream by asking for the grace to open my hands to receive it as His gift.

And, finally, how do we listen to His Heart except by learning the ways of docibilitas - teachability? We can make our prayer along the lines of today's Responsorial Psalm:

Blessed be the Lord, my rock,

who trains my arms for battle,

who prepares my hands for war.

To receive God's dream for us, we need His training and His preparation. Perhaps as we saw in the gospel a few days ago, we also need some manuring! But with that training and preparation (and the manuring!), our hearts can learn to answer - anawim and beggars though we be -  the all-powerful longing of the One who made us.