Wednesday of the Seventh Week of Easter
Optional Memorial of Saint Bernardine of Siena, Priest
It’s important to carefully unpack the subtle nuance of what Jesus means when he says that we are in the world without belonging to it. As human beings, we have two natures: a physical nature, and a spiritual nature. Our souls animate our physical flesh, and we spend our mortal lives inhabiting physical space and time. Moreover, we exist as individuals who belong to a larger, social whole with the family serving as the basic unit of society. As such, we labor daily to satisfy our bodily necessities while cultivating relationships with others. In this sense, we very much live in the world because we materially exist in it.
At the same time, there are elements of the human heart that can never be satisfied by any physical, material thing. We were created for relationship with God and designed with desires for infinite love. In this sense, we are not of the world nor do we truly belong to it, because there is nothing in material existence that can begin to satisfy the deepest yearnings of the human heart. This is why utter desolation and discontent inevitably result whenever people try to satisfy the infinite desires of their spiritual nature with finite material things. The primary goal of our earthly pilgrimage is to realize that God alone is capable of satisfying the deep desires of the soul as we learn, little by little, to begin living into our eternity each day.