A cartoon I saw recently depicted a woman saying, "My desire to remain well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane." Her sentiment may be shared by many today who find it hard to deal with all that's happening in politics, AI, wars, climate, and on and on.

Desire. It can sound like a dangerous word. While our puritanical culture often hears it with sexual connotations, St. Ignatius of Loyola made the discovery of our deepest desires a key part of his Spiritual Exercises. That's also what Jesus was talking about when he reproached the Pharisees for performing ritual practices that maintained an aloof avoidance of involvement with their hearts.

Today's readings each touch the theme of the heart.

First, Moses tells the people to hear what he has to say so that they might remain close to God. As they are about to enter into the Promised Land, he reminds them that God alone is the source of all that they have and are. Recognizing that is what will make them a wise people, as Isaiah will say, a light to the nations.

The books of Exodus and Deuteronomy give us diverse renditions of the law of Moses. This indicates that, in spite of what today's text seems to say about changing nothing, the essence of the law is not in regulations but in the relationships the law fosters among the people and between them and their God.

The people who seek to know and follow God's will are the ones who will be "wise and intelligent." As today's psalm says, they think the truth in their heart, which means that their intellect and emotions will lead them to the reverence that expresses an appreciation of the meaning of law, far beyond the letter.

St. James develops Moses' idea as he encourages his community to allow God's word to continually bring them to life.

Their relationship with God begins with God's initiative, like a seed planted within them. God planted the seed, now they need to cultivate it, rejecting the temptation to delude themselves by thinking that they know God when they don't live as ambassadors of God's love.

Interacting with his critics, Jesus dubbed them "hypocrites." The word comes from Greek theater, where the actors masked themselves, pretending to be the character they were playing. That's normal in a play. Jesus saw his critics play-acting, masking themselves with legalism and rituals rather than living faith in God.

The word religion connotes a relationship, a binding of one to another. The legalists had bound themselves to ideas, to particular practices rather than to God and neighbor. They put on a very good act, but their hearts were comfortably disengaged.

When Jesus went on to talk about what was truly impure, he mentioned not one single infringement of ritual laws. Instead, he gave his listeners a list of actions that harm others, behaviors that defile the perpetrator even as they denigrate others. He knew that it's a lot easier to wash one's hands or follow the rubrics than it is to live in reverence for all of God's creation. He also demonstrated which of those two options brings joy.

Jesus minces no words in his reproach. He challenges all of us who hear him to stop deluding ourselves by accepting compliance with regulations as a substitute for the kind of relationship with God that frees us to act out of love and nothing else.

What does this say to the woman who sees herself trapped by seemingly mutually exclusive desires? St. Basil the Great taught that love for God cannot be taught any more than people need to be taught to enjoy the light or life. Rather, we are created with an interior longing for love and the source of love. When we are deeply aware, we know that love is our deepest desire.

Jesus didn't convert many of his adversaries. Although he invited everyone to explore the depths and the meaning of their humanity, most didn't take him up on it, and those who did were by and large outsiders: social outcasts and disciples rejected for having faith in him.

Finding and following our deepest desires will free us to follow the Lord, who was called insane and a lawbreaker — but was never accused of failing to love. 

Back in the late 1970s, Bob Dylan wrote the Grammy-winning "Gotta Serve Somebody." His message? "You may be an ambassador to England or France, you may like to gamble, you might like to dance ... But you're gonna have to serve somebody ... It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you're gonna have to serve somebody."

Like all genuine Gospel music, the song is not just singable. It challenges some basic common assumptions — this one going to the heart of the U.S. culture's addiction to individualism and independence. The fact that U.S. citizens seem obsessed about preserving our individual rights is a clear and ironic illustration of the truth of the chorus.

The minute we discover what orients our decisions, what we would protect at any cost, we know what we serve — consciously or not. (If there's nothing that fits the bill, we may be dedicated only to spontaneous self-gratification.) 

Dylan could have been paraphrasing from what we hear Joshua saying in today's first reading as Joshua demanded that the Israelites declare their core allegiance.

The Israelites' promise to serve the God who had done so much for then expressed much more than reciting their history or a creed. Their declaration of fidelity implied that their identity as a people didn't rest on a common land, language or kinship, but on their common response to the God who had led them into freedom, protected them and formed them into a unique people.

Their affirmation, "We will serve the Lord!", also declared that it was their Lord who made them who they were. Without God's activity among them, they could not have been a people. Their common identity came from God's work and their response.

St. Paul's reflection on marriage as a sacrament of divine love is oft-criticized for overlooking the equality and mutuality of the relationship between women and their husbands (in verses that may be skipped in the liturgy). With or without those verses, Paul reminds us that our commitments to love form us as who we are.

We become one with those whom we love. This makes genuine friendship and love of any degree an experience and living sign of God's loving interrelationship with creation and of God's unique relationship with human creatures, the only ones we know that are able to choose freely whether and how much to allow God's love to form them.

All of this leads into our final reflection on John 6, the moment when we hear the reaction of Jesus' various disciples. What Jesus has been saying about coming from God and being the very bread of life has taken some of them further than they were ready to go. 

Jesus a prophet? Yes! From God? In some way, for sure. Come from heaven to be as much a part of them as the bread they eat? That was a bit of a stretch. If they couldn't really understand or fully accept what he was saying, better to go home sooner rather than later.

Like the time he asked why only one of 10 people cured of leprosy had come back to him, Jesus turned to those closest to him asking, "Do you also want to go?"

Peter spoke for all and responded, "Lord, to whom can we go? You alone have the words of eternal life."

In saying that, Peter took his group further than Joshua's people had gone. Being with Jesus had given them a new identity, and even if they didn't understand everything, they knew that with him, they were on the road to serving God, and God alone.

One of the wonderful things about this moment was that it confirmed for Jesus that the Father had led these people to him. Through him, these disciples had tasted the Spirit that gives life, and they didn't want to live without that experience ever again. Their life with Jesus had changed their identity. They were beginning to understand him as the holy one of God.

Peter's declaration was no intellectual decision. Perhaps it had been for the people who left, but those who stayed made a soul-deep choice. No matter what others would say, no matter how foolish it seemed, no matter what other options might seem easier or more acceptable, they had found their identity in relationship to him. Knowing that they were risking the meaning of their lives, they chose to remain with him.

So, for us, addicts to the independence we think of as freedom, this month of meditating on Jesus as the Bread of Life has led us to hear Jesus question us: "Are you all in?" Will you let our communal relationship become your identity?

Whom will we serve?