“The Lord refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for His name’s sake” (Ps 23:3).
The German translation of this verse says: “The Lord satisfies my longing” instead of “He refreshes my soul”. Indeed, God has sown deep in our hearts a longing for Him. In His Wisdom, He allows us to experience that our life lacks something essential when we do not know Him and other lesser things take their place in our heart. Even if initially we do not perceive or understand much of this emptiness, and even if the many distractions temporarily satisfy us, deep down in our soul we know that: “As a deer yearns for running streams, so I yearn for you, my God” – as the psalmist expresses it (Ps 42:1).
The soul suffers and feels like an exile when it is not united to its Creator and Father. It lives in a foreign land, subjected to the yoke of slavery; its longing is not satisfied, because “our heart is restless until it rests in you” (St. Augustine).
What joy the soul experiences, on the other hand, when it meets the Father, when it corresponds to His love, when the Lord awakens it with the kiss of His love! It seems that there is not enough room in the heart for so much joy and it wants to explode and tell everyone what the Lord has done. Our souls become fully immersed and blessed by our merciful Father, who delights us with a great banquet, like the prodigal son (Lk 15:22-24).
God alone can satisfy our desire, and indeed He does so in superabundance. Then our soul becomes docile and silent, so that the Father can guide us along the right path. Each day becomes for us a gift of His paternal goodness, and day by day a loving attention before God grows. We can no longer imagine a single moment without our Father and we regret every moment in which we did not respond to His love.
Now God guides us on a safe path and, with each passing day, draws us more and more to Himself. He has brought us out of the valley of confusion and indifference, and now He can fill us with Himself. It is a joy for Him to satisfy the longing of our soul, and at the same time He arouses in us an ever greater longing: to grow in love, to become a torrent of grace that never runs out, that glorifies God and serves all humankind.