This past Sunday was the Fifth Sunday in Lent, and the Collect of the Day is one of my favorites. I’m looking forward to praying it throughout the week:
Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
In this prayer, we confess that our wills and affections are “unruly,” which means they’re difficult to discipline and bring under control. The things we want and are attracted to are very often not the same things that lead us into a life of holistic flourishing. Anyone who’s been a Christian for a few days can attest to this.
Our appetites and hungers—spiritual, emotional, physical—often lead us into trouble. I have a sweet tooth, but I know by experience that if I give myself over to eating as much sugar as my desire for sweetness would demand, my health will suffer. My sweet tooth is an “unruly” affection.
Likewise, I have a strong desire for autonomy in my life. I don’t like relying on other people, or asking for help, or being told what to do, so I have a tendency to organize my life for maximum self-sufficiency and self-determination. I also know by experience that if I give myself over to my desire for maximum autonomy, my relationships suffer, and thus I suffer. What promises freedom and life actually delivers isolation and death. This is an “unruly” part of my will.
Bringing them into order
Just a smallest amount of self-awareness helps us see that it isn’t wise or good for us to follow our every whim. Most of us have gotten ourselves into enough trouble by getting what we want to know that there’s something not quite right with our “wanters.” We know that our wills and affections should not to be simply fulfilled as they present themselves to us.
I used to assume this meant that our wills and affections ought to be eliminated. The path to holiness and moral goodness, I thought, was to eradicate my desires and put distance between me and whatever I was attracted to. The logic seemed sound at the time: following these desires led me into trouble, so they must be bad, right?
But I’ve come to see that it’s not so black-and-white, because underneath every “bad” desire there is a deep longing for something we truly need and were created for. At The Table, we often name these created human needs as security, belonging, and significance. We were all created to know and experience that we are safe (security), that we are accepted and wanted as we are (belonging), and that we can make a meaningful contribution in the world to the common good (significance).
For God to “bring into order” our unruly wills and affections, then, is for God to help us see, with compassion and curiosity, what deep human need is being brought to the surface through the disordered desires we’re noticing. My unruly desire for sugar and the temporary feeling of pleasure and comfort it brings is a distorted echo of my legitimate need for security, to know I’m going to be okay. My unruly desire for autonomy (and my fear of dependence on others) is a distorted echo of my legitimate need for significance, to know I have something to offer for the common good.
So our desires aren’t meant to be fulfilled as they present themselves to us, but nor are they meant to be killed. Our desires need to be discerned, because
they’re unruly (not “good” or “bad”), and
they’re always echos of a deeper, legitimate human need that is yearning to be fulfilled.
Transforming desire
So the goal isn’t the elimination of desire, it’s the discernment of desire, so it can be transformed. This happens when we learn to notice and name our desires, and sit with the awareness of them long enough to allow the deep created need underneath the disordered desire to show itself and be felt. Then we can feel God’s affirmation of that need, and open ourselves to the grace we need to tell a new story about our desires, and “aim” them toward the place where their true fulfillment lies: in cooperative trust with God instead of anxious striving. This is how we learn to “love what you command and desire what you promise.”
In my sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent last year, I talked about how this is a difficult process for most of us, and almost always involves suffering of some kind. The Hebrew writer tells us what the Gospels show us, that even Jesus “learned obedience through what he suffered” (Heb 5:8), and “offered prayers and requests with loud cries and tears” (Heb 5:7). When Jesus turned his mind toward his impending crucifixion, he was “deeply troubled” (John 12:27) and “in anguish” (Luke 22:44).
We can expect the process to be difficult, but blessedly, Jesus’ suffering has paved the way for us to suffer well. I find it comforting to know that noticing and naming my unruly desires and simply confessing them in God’s presence is something I can do in the face of temptation, trusting God to show me the true nature of my desires and grant me the grace that transforms my desires. In this way, even “among the swift and varied changes of the world,” my heart becomes ever more surely “fixed where true joys are to be found.”
