Pilgrim Longing

by Anna Carter

All of us experience a gap between the “already” and the “not yet;” the gap between dreams for our lives and our experienced reality, between our own lofty expectations and what God seems to be granting (or not). We know what it is to desire happiness, worth, and fulfillment, yet to sense those same desires bend like a reed in the wind—sometimes towards God, sometimes away from Him.

Here at Eden Invitation, we’re acutely aware of this reality. People come to us precisely because they long for something. Yes, desires in the LGBTQ+ space can be sexual or existential. But longing can be for other goods too. For each of Eden Invitation’s other three community values, we started with an explanation of a correlating longing: Beloved Unrepeatability & the longing to be known. Mutual Belonging & the longing to be loved. Joyful Hope & the longing for purpose. So how do we start when the value is Pilgrim Longing itself?

The Church doesn’t often speak of “longing,” but she does speak of desire. If you’ve ever taken the Catechism for a spin, you’ll know that Chapter One begins like this: “The desire for God is written on the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for" (CCC 27). This concept of infinite, insatiable desire is all throughout Scripture and the rich spiritual tradition of our faith. For the sake of word count, here are a mere three popular examples:

• “My soul yearns and pines for the courts of the Lord. My heart and flesh cry out of the living God!” (Psalm 84:2, NAB)

• “You breathed Your fragrance on me; I drew in a breath and now I pant for You. I have tasted You, now I hunger and thirst more. You touched me, and I burned for Your peace.” (St. Augustine, Confessions)

• “Lord Jesus Christ…let me seek You by desiring You, and let me desire You by seeking You; let me find You by loving You, and love You in finding You.” (Prayer of St. Anselm of Canterbury)

Perhaps you’re noticing some common themes—they all describe the dance between the anticipation of God, an encounter with Him, and a realization that desire isn’t entirely fulfilled. Perhaps that’s because our life in God is still in progress. We’re not home yet.

Longing, I’d say, isn’t just desire in itself. Semantically, “longing” relates to the concept of “far” or “having a great linear extent.” It came to be associated with weariness and sadness in Old English. When we’re longing, we’re far from what we want, and it isn’t pleasant. Longing is a name we give to the gap between us and the object of our desire.

So what makes a longing particularly pilgrim? If you’ve ever gone on a pilgrimage, you may have received a little document about the differences between being a “pilgrim” and a “tourist.” That difference isn’t in the destination. A pilgrim will probably eat in a restaurant, and a tourist might visit a cathedral. The difference is in the demeanor. A tourist seeks experiences—to see the monument, to taste the specialty food, to lounge by the water. Even seeking a “religious experience” can be a form of tourism if we’re not self-aware. The hunt for a spiritual high is not the same thing as seeking God for God’s own sake. A pilgrim, on the other hand, seeks a Person (or Three, perhaps!). The Christian pilgrim doesn’t step into longing for the sake of desire. The Christian pilgrim steps into longing for the sake of relationship.

When we look at the pilgrim way, we see the long, spooling road ahead. But it isn’t just a road. Perhaps it’s an “invisible string,” like the children’s book, connecting us to the One we love. The same image comes at the end of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, where—after hundreds of pages of searching—the protagonist finds himself back before the tabernacle, pulled to God by “a twitch upon the thread.”

This isn’t easy. Longing can be experienced as a little paschal mystery (more on this directly relating to an LGBTQ+ experience here). There is a feeling of suffering that we have not arrived at the object of our desire, and perhaps a death of our attachment to imperfect or impartial goods. From that surrender to God, a new life of grace can resurrect in us. But we don’t stop there! St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us that “Christ’s Ascension is the cause of our salvation…on our part, in so far as by the Ascension our souls are uplifted to him…He prepared the way for our ascent into Heaven” (Summa Theologiae III.57.6).

In other words, we can have faith that our longing can really and truly be met by God’s longing. This is not only in the little dyings and little risings of the spiritual life, but also in the anticipation of our heavenly home. Jesus prepares us for this possibility at the Last Supper: “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be” (John 14:2-3 NAB).

But this encounter isn’t something to await in the far distant future. God Himself wants us to dwell with Him, and that starts now. St. Augustine describes it this way: 

“For just as he remained with us even after his ascension, so we too are already in heaven with him, even though what is promised us has not yet been fulfilled in our bodies…while in heaven he is also with us; and we while on earth are with him…we cannot be in heaven, as he is on earth, by divinity, but in him, we can be there by love.” (St. Augustine, Sermo de Ascensione Domini, Mai 98, 1-7: PLS 2, 429-495)

Pilgrim Longing is acutely aware of this dynamic of emptiness, anticipation, encounter, and impartial–but very real!– fulfillment in this life. It’s also acutely aware that the truest fulfillment of our longings is in God, as the culmination of a lifelong journey. So, how do we live it?

Posture 1 | My desire offers a trailhead to the Infinite.

“Every desire, even the most embodied, is a glimmer of a longing for God imprinted on our being, created in God’s image. A monastic approach to passion does not seek to block it, but to channel it so to generate the verve required on our journey to God, while we patiently drain the mushroom-infested, boggy patches of our lives, which have become unfruitful on account of passionate overspill.” 

| Bishop Erik Varden, Chastity: Reconciliation of the Senses

Let’s take a moment to consider the trailhead. If you’ve been to any kind of large park, you've likely seen one. Trailheads are placed at junctions when the path branches into multiple options. In wilderness areas, you’ll see a slab of wood with the words “Jade Lake 5 miles | Tabor Summit 18 miles,” each with a simple arrow. That’s about it for helpful information! What is the elevation gain? Will the scenery be nice? Is the trail in good condition? How about bear sightings? A trailhead isn’t the same thing as a map, and it certainly isn’t the same thing as the path. It can point you in different directions. You have to choose.

Passion, desire, and longing can have a “disordered” focus. That means that, if followed through exactly as received, it would lead us to a different “end” than God intended (for a longer write-up on that word, check out this blog from us). For a personal example, I might see a lesbian story play out in a TV show and have an embodied response. I might be aroused, and in my gut feel “It’d be nice if that was my story.” In that moment, the longing is pretty bound up in a desire for sex with a woman (usually one I could fly spaceships or fight dragons with, adding yet another layer to the reality of unfulfillment in this life). I could take the fork to Jade Lake, so to speak. I could amble down the path towards fantasy, self-pleasure, or—if I was really picking up the pace—look for ways to realize that desire with another flesh-and-blood person.

I could also take the trail to Tabor Summit. I could pause a moment, maybe go to my prayer chair, maybe take a walk, maybe drive to Eucharistic adoration. And I could say, “Hey God. I’ve got some feelings. That story and those characters really compelled me. Can we take some time to talk about it?” I could do some self-examination with questions about the gaps I sense in my life: What am I looking for? Who do I wish I could be, but don’t think I am? How do I wish someone would stand by me? Are some of these things already present in my life in some way, and I’m just struggling to pay attention? Then comes the real kicker. I turn to God in the silence and say: How do You want to meet me here? How do these desires show me something about who You are? 

In this posture, Pilgrim Longing echoes the sentiment of mystics throughout the ages, and the analogy can apply across LGBTQ+ experiences or across disordered desires. It can also apply to “ordered” desires too! In other words, even desires that could lead to morally licit earthly satiation have their ultimate end in God, like the desire to witness beauty. No matter the longing, we can always, always, choose the trailhead to the Infinite. By “the Infinite,” we mean God. We mean the horizon line of Heaven. We mean the future glory, the perfect union that will one day happen between Lover and beloved, between Christ the Bridegroom and you and me, Church, as Bride in the eternal Wedding Feast. 

We also mean perfect identification. The Catechism talks about this in the reasons for the Incarnation, one of which is to become “partakers in the divine nature” (c.f. CCC 460). Eastern Christian thought calls this “deification”—perhaps best known in the West from a line of St. Athanasius: “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God” (De inc. 54, 3: PG 25, 192B). 

This isn’t some disembodied, ethereal oneness with the mist. It’s deeply rooted in our person. We’re created in God’s image, and the perfections of maleness and femaleness are hidden in the heart of God. God is infinite goodness, and part of that is God’s perfect sharing of God’s self—a perfect, infinite pouring out. And yet God also receives Godself—a perfect, infinite gathering in and receptivity. Here’s the Catechism connecting that concept to sexual identity:

• We ought to recall that God transcends the human distinction between the sexes. He is neither man nor woman: He is God. He also transcends human fatherhood and motherhood, although He is their origin and standard. (CCC 239).

• In no way is God in man’s image. He is neither man nor woman. God is pure spirit in which there is no place for the differences between the sexes. But the respective “perfections” of man and woman reflect something of the infinite perfection of God. (CCC 370).

Ok! So! Let’s spell this out more overtly. My longing as a woman for union with another woman is a trailhead. On one level, it is disordered. That means there are certain paths I just shouldn’t take, lest I be drawn away from my heavenly destination. But we Catholics don’t believe that our fallen desires are entirely depraved. They do contain a hint of eternal truth. There’s an echo in my longing for union with the eternal feminine in God. When I pause at the trailhead, and let that echo ring through my experience–hitting a truer note than the disordered one ever could–my longing can help me move towards my destination. It needs some gradual purification along the way, but more on that in the next postures in this blog.

If I am to become holy, I must take the Infinite path. My longing (as a woman) for union with another human woman must transcend to the eternal feminine in God. Men, same thing! Longing for a human man must transcend to the eternal masculine in God. For our siblings experiencing gender disconnect…women feeling kinship with the male-typical must transcend to a likeness with the eternal masculine in God. Men feeling kinship with the female-typical must transcend to a likeness with the eternal feminine in God. And for someone experiencing asexuality and a longing for deep platonic intimacy…how about instead of angst, the trailhead also points towards the mysterious state we’ll all have in Heaven, where there’s perfect joy (and perfect union with the divine Spouse), but “no marrying or giving in marriage” in the earthly sense (c.f. Jesus in Matthew 22:30).

There are temptations to sin in these areas, that’s true. But another temptation is to ignore the desire entirely or wish it away. What if, instead, we took our desires in another direction? As opportunities to encounter God in a new way? Our choosing God, our choosing the trailhead to the Infinite in these circumstances can become a means of His grace anew in our lives. That, my friends, happens one step at a time.

Posture 2 | I walk with God at the pace of my feet.

“It is neither our poverty nor our weakness that prevent us from becoming saints, but rather our lack of thirst, of desire, and a self-sufficiency which closes us to the gift of God…sometimes saints are presented like champions of human virtues, but one forgets that they have often been scorned and excluded from the people of their time, judged crazy and stupid, and have often been considered poor and destitute….the saint is not a witness of strength of will or of natural witness, but he is a witness of the folly of the Cross and of weakness transformed by grace.”

| André Daigneault, The Way of Imperfection

I’m both an ardent road-tripper and backpacker. I know the difference between blitzing through a region on the interstate and boots trodding over broken stone. For the road-tripper, corn fields or desert scrub or trees blur at the edges into a dull haze. When you walk, you see sprouts bravely rising in spring. Your eye catches on the gecko scurrying into a crack in the rock. You smell the changing seasons in damp earth or dry leaves. In this posture, Eden Invitation proposes that we be where our feet are now. That means living just a little differently, especially in contrast to a foot pressing down on the gas pedal. A pilgrim allows themselves to be present to the moment while they move through the contours of a place. Let’s take a look at both concepts.

This posture embraces the present moment. Catholics make distinctions between God’s active will (“God directly did this”) and God’s passive or permissive will (“God allowed this”). Whatever way you slice it, God’s will is present in our present. Some of us spend our lives trying to drive or apparate away from our problems. Thomas à Kempis, author of the spiritual classic Imitation of Christ, gravely reminds us: “The cross, therefore, is always ready and everywhere waits for you. You cannot escape it, wherever you run, for wherever you go you carry yourself with you, and will always find yourself.” We find the cross in ourselves, in our own brokenness. But we never walk alone. It’s in this moment, of course, that God is found.

Spiritual masters have a lot of words for it. Jean Pierre de Caussade called it “the sacrament of the present moment”—that sacred encounter with God in time. Brother Lawrence wrote on “the practice of the presence of God”—the daily choice we make to be available to grace. In one of Eden Invitation’s frequent book club selections, He Leadeth Me, Fr. Walter Ciszek reflects on the heft of every moment:

“Every moment of our life has a purpose; every action of ours, no matter how dull or routine or trivial it may seem in itself, has a dignity and a worth beyond human understanding […] Yet what a terrible responsibility is here. For it means that no moment can be wasted, no opportunity missed, since each has a purpose in man’s life, each has a purpose in God’s plan. Think of your day, today or yesterday. Think of the work you did, the people you met, moment by moment. What did it mean to you—and what might it have meant for God?”

This posture also recognizes the necessity of forward progress. We don’t stand still in the Christian life. Yes, we can (and should!) take time for silence and solitude, we can quiet our hearts, but the soul is moving. Where we are today in the spiritual life is, ideally, not where we’ll be tomorrow. We’ll be a step further down the road.

This applies to LGBTQ+ experiences– not just in the areas of sexual temptation (though that too), but in the holistic sense of life. The Church reminds us that “each of them, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his [or her] sexual identity” (CCC 2393). Acknowledge comes from the Old English concept “to recognize.” Accept is from Latin, meaning “to take,” even “to take or receive willingly.” Sexual identity, as the Church understands it, includes interlocking concepts: our embodied reality of maleness or femaleness, our respective sexual complementarity (the “spousal meaning” of the body, as St. John Paul II put it), and our reproductive potency (or “familial meaning” of the body, we could say).* As you can imagine, LGBTQ+ experiences could create some roadblocks to really vibing with these concepts. 

“The Infinite” is about all of God. As a woman primarily attracted to women, I also anticipate union with the eternal masculine. What does it look like for me to appreciate those aspects of God? How can I grow in desire for closeness to God as Father, for union with Him as Bridegroom? I must “acknowledge and accept” that these truths are written into my body, whether or not they are consummated in marriage on earth. When we take this to gender disconnect, we encounter something similar. Yes, desiring likeness with the “other” can be a trailhead! A man drawn to embody femininity can take a path towards deeper identification with the Church as Bride of Christ. But he also must “acknowledge and accept” the identity given to him in the first place–and a very rich one at that, given the Eternal Son’s choice of incarnate flesh.

To be clear here…this posture is not talking about programming a change in sexual arousal patterns, though some people do experience fluidity in their sexual desires. It is not talking about the utter eradication of disordered experiences in this life–the Church simply doesn’t promise that. No, she reminds us: “he who climbs never stops going from beginning to beginning, through beginnings that have no end” (St. Gregory of Nyssa, c.f. CCC 2015).

*These truths are also lived in chaste relationships with one another, potentially as Christian spouses but always as friends. You can read more about that in our pieces on chastity and Eden Invitation’s community value, Mutual Belonging.

Posture 3 | I humbly submit to the journey of a lifetime.

“The soul in search of God […] never passes from one stage of its ascension to the next except by a series of rejections and denials, for the beings which it questions on the road all reply: ‘We are not the God you are seeking.’” 

| Henri de Lubac, The Discovery of God

There’s a bit in Frank Sheed’s Map of Life that I absolutely love. He points out that life “is a preparation a man must successfully undergo in order to live the life of heaven.” He uses the analogy of learning to breathe the atmosphere of heaven. As a hiker, it reminds me of the need to acclimatize when a person changes altitude. On earth, the higher you go, the “thinner” the air. It has less oxygen. If you don’t take your time ascending, your body may experience shortness of breath, headaches, and even more severe symptoms of altitude sickness. Analogously, the gradual, step-by-step growth in virtue in this life, the slow alignment to the life of Christ…this all prepares us to breathe easy and free in Heaven one day. The climb itself is preparation to arrive.

There are a few important concepts in this posture. We have humility about what will happen next. Christian doctrine gives us a topographical map of the journey ahead, and the lives of the saints give us snapshots of vistas and valleys along the way. But I don’t know what will happen to me until I get there. How bad are the blisters in my boots? Are there clouds or rain? A person simply can't know all of the circumstances that await them going forward—promotions or job loss, unexpected pregnancy or the fifth miscarriage, economic booms or nationwide recession—and how they’ll shape the available choices. I also can't know exactly what God will do in me. Sometimes temptations fade, other times they linger like St. Paul’s thorn in the side. Whatever happens, it’s going to take time. The Church reminds us that “the divine plan of revelation…involves a specific divine pedagogy [God’s way of teaching us]. God communicates Himself to man gradually” (CCC 53).

It’s also worth noting that this progress isn’t always a straight line. When you’re ascending a mountain, a common path construction is the switchback. You criss-cross the mountain, sometimes walking hundreds of feet only to be twenty feet higher than you were minutes ago. And sometimes growth and progress aren’t linear at all! We love gardens here at Eden Invitation, so let’s consider the seed. When a lemon tree or a grape vine grows, it doesn’t become a bigger seed. The seed cracks open and grows down first, through the root system. Then comes the sprout from the soil and the unfurling leaves. Still later, the vine or the trunk, the flowers, the fruit. If you knew nothing about plants and watched this process unfold for the first time, you would have no idea what fruit either plant would bear, or if they’d even bear fruit at all! Our progression in the spiritual life can often be hidden, gradual, and surprising.

Let’s harken back to Fr. Ciszek’s insight—that every moment has a part in God’s plan. The pilgrim submits to that reality. In Christian theology, “submit” or “submission” has become connected to the concept of being sent by God (or religious superiors) to perform a particular task (i.e. “mission”). This posture also includes being at the service of God’s mission—to His molding of my life, His telling of my story, not my own agenda. What will He giveth, and what will He taketh away?

This doesn’t mean an apathetic resignation to forces outside of our control. As previously mentioned, I’m a lover of long trips. I’ve done month-long cross-country road trips (solo!) multiple times. That requires preparation. That requires a solid packing list, a good sense of the route and the landmarks you want to hit, and strategic planning to make sure you have a place to stay on Sundays so your dog can be at your friend’s house and not in a hot car when you go to Mass.

On the lifelong pilgrim journey, this means good habits of Christian practice—rhythms of prayer and solitude; integrating liturgy and sacraments into your days and weeks; spiritual reading; guidance and fellowship in community; service to the poor, marginalized, and vulnerable. It means spiritual discernment of landmark moments and living with intention. It also means a sensitivity to the “hot cars” of your spiritual and moral life—maybe blocking a website or deleting a phone number. Or maybe it means adding a phone number and finding consistent people to lean on in times of deep distress.

And, again, be patient, be patient, be patient. I remember when, earlier in my spiritual life, I thought I would “arrive.” After a certain amount of striving, I would “acquire” humility or love or chastity or peace, like it was some kind of video game item in a treasure chest. But that’s not the way God works. At the end of C.S. Lewis’ children’s novel The Last Battle, the world ends (spoiler!) and our heroes find themselves progressing deeper into Heaven. The rallying cry is “further up and further in.” The Catechism puts it thus:

“It remains for the holy people to struggle, with grace from on high, to obtain the good things God promises…on this way of perfection, the Spirit and the Bride call whoever hears them to perfect communion with God: ‘there will true glory be…God himself will be virtue’s reward…God himself will be the goal of our desires” (CCC 2549-2550).

Lace up those boots, my friend. It’s going to be a long walk!

Mission Movement | Create Space

While, chronologically, “Pilgrim Longing” is the final Eden Invitation value to be named, it’s actually first in the mission statement. Here’s the whole thing for good measure: Eden Invitation creates space to receive the whole person (Beloved Unrepeatability), grow systems of mutual support (Mutual Belonging), and empower for creative discipleship (Joyful Hope). 

Perhaps the correlation isn’t obvious to you. It wasn’t to me either, at first, but I think it’s quite lovely. Because desire is such a fickle thing, simultaneously pulsing with danger and replete with transcendent possibility–and God works within all of us in His own time and His own way–a community needs to create space. The mission movement is making sure the Holy Spirit has room to breathe in you and in me. When I begin to inculcate these postures within my own life, I need to create space in at least two dimensions.

I need to create space for God. As has been stated already, I truly cannot comprehend the mystery He invites me into. Within the LGBTQ+ space, this could lead to upended expectations in all manner of ways. Maybe you're called to a counter-cultural celibacy, where your life is uniquely enriched by availability for God and rich communal life. Maybe you’re called to a particular wonder over a particular other of the opposite sex. Maybe you don’t know. Maybe that isn’t even what God wants you to focus on right now in your spiritual life!  In the churn of that interim, Eden Invitation would offer you a few considerations. When He ascended into Heaven, Jesus promised, “behold, I am with you always” (c.f. Matthew 28:20). Can you embrace God’s nearness to you? Can you create space to be rooted in your own dignity, identity, and—yes—poverty too? Can you create space to feel the wind of the Spirit caress your cheek, and long to follow where He leads?

I also need to create space for others. The pilgrim journey is uniquely particular. I can’t imagine that the way God worked in me is exactly how God wants to work in someone else right now. The Catechism reminds us that “teachers must not imagine that a single kind of soul has been entrusted to them” (CCC 24). You might not be a teacher, but the point still stands. Your journey is not your neighbor’s journey, is not your best friend’s journey, is not your sibling’s journey. Their timing is not your timing. Perhaps we can create spaces both for patience with graduality and invitation to abundant life. Perhaps we can receive one another as messy and lovely works in progress. Perhaps we can spend some time walking side by side, with the aim of arriving at Love and journeying Home together.