EVERYONE IS LOOKING FOR YOU

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Let me tell you how I spent my meditation period early this morning.

I was reading the gospel passage assigned for mass on Feb 4, 2018. Toward the end, Mark tells us that Jesus got up early and went off to a deserted place to pray, but that Peter and some others searched him out and said to him, "Everyone is looking for you! (Mark 1:37)" I spent the next half-hour reflecting on this sentence.

As humans, we are perpetually unfinished, always looking for something "more." Exactly what that "something" is seems to vary widely from person to person. If you want, you can Google "What is happiness?" and you get 33,400,000 results.

Somewhere in my philosophy training, I seem to remember being told that Aristotle, in answering the question "What is happiness?" said, "Happiness is that which everyone is seeking." I put that idea alongside the verse from Mark,"Everyone is looking for you, and concluded that all of us, whether we realize it or not, are seeking Jesus. We're created in the image of God, created for ultimate happiness. St. Augustine famously reminds us that only God can fill up the God-shaped void in the center of our lives.

People certainly do pursue some strange things in their search for Ultimate Happiness, thinking that they'll find it in money, power, being loved, or in blowing themselves up in a crowded marketplace.

And what about me? How do I behave when I'm truly "looking for Christ?" It seems to me that He has given me plenty of examples and specific directions, such as washing one another's feet, carrying one another's burdens, and being "meek and humble of heart." I spent some time this morning looking at my own life and asking myself how well I've been "seeking Christ."

I prayed that I may respond to my unfinishedness as a human being by spending every day "seeking Jesus," and that I will always deserve to be numbered in that great crowd that Peter told Jesus about: "Everyone is looking for you?"