When Nothing in This World Satisfies

On holy heaviness, simplicity, and the narrowing of desire

“Whom have I in heaven but Thee?

And there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee.”

Psalm 73:25

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There is a tiredness that sleep cures.

And there is a tiredness that sleep cannot touch.

The body rests. The mind functions. The day moves forward. And yet beneath everything there is a heaviness of heart, not despair, not depression, not regret, but gravity. A weight that feels almost sacred.

Nothing in this world satisfies.

And strangely, I no longer expect it to.

There was a time when I believed the next season, the next project, the next structure of belonging would finally quiet the interior ache. Even when speaking of renunciation, some hidden part of me still hoped for something in this world to reward the effort.

That expectation has dissolved.

There is an emptiness now, but it is not the emptiness of loss. It feels more like clearing. A field after harvest. A chapel after the lamps are extinguished and only the red vigil light remains.

The desire has not lessened.

It has intensified.

But it strains toward nothing in this world.

There is mourning, not a worldly sadness, not nostalgia for “glory days,” but a quiet grief for the self that had to be dismantled. The priest who labored above his formation. The teacher who spoke beyond his silence. The man who sought identity in roles.

That self is dying.

And death, even when it is mercy, carries weight.

At sixty, death is no longer abstract. It stands quietly in the room. Not as threat. Not as panic. But as truth. Everything built will dissolve. Every role will fall away. Every word will either endure in Christ or vanish.

What remains?

Love.

And the present moment.

There is a severe clarity about that.

The future holds no romance. The past holds no comfort. There is only this moment and where the heart must be within it.

To remain loving within the small radius God has given.

In the silence of the chapel, where the psalms grow fewer and simpler. Where words give way to the steady rhythm of the Jesus Prayer or to no words at all. Where silence itself becomes prayer.

To remain loving in the small radius God has given: my mother in the next room, the faces on the screen who gather with hunger for the Fathers, the quiet dog resting at my feet, the steady chime of the clock marking time like a patient monk.

Nothing grand.

Nothing dramatic.

Only attention.

Only presence.

Only love.

Perhaps this heaviness is purification. When nothing in the world satisfies, the soul is being narrowed toward the One thing necessary. When sleep does not fix the tiredness, it may be because it is not the body asking to rest but the ego. The striving. The explaining.

Silence is becoming less an ideal and more a necessity.

The psalms grow simpler. The Jesus Prayer shortens. Sometimes even that falls away, and there is only breath, and waiting, and the sense that Christ stands very near.

Not conceptually.

Not emotionally.

But truly.

If this is diminishment, let it be holy. If this is the approach of death, whether near or distant, let it find the heart sober and free of illusion.

There is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee.

When nothing in this world satisfies, perhaps it is because the heart was never made for this world.

Only for Him.