“The
days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new
covenant with the house of
Israel. […] I will place my law within them and write it
upon their hearts […].
No longer will they have need to teach their friends and relatives
how to know the Lord. All, from least to greatest, shall know me,
says the Lord.”
What
a great promise, that we will not need anyone to teach us how to know
the Lord, because we will encounter Him in an unmediated way when He
writes on our heart.
“Some
Greeks […] came to Philip […] and asked him, 'Sir, we would like
to see Jesus.'” These Greeks may not have gotten an
up-close-and-personal one-on-one with Jesus, but there He was,
standing there for all to see! “No longer will they have need to
teach their friends and relatives how to know the Lord”—He's
right there! And they got to hear a voice from Heaven, “I have
glorified it and will glorify it again.”
Perhaps
we come to Mass today with that same desire, “We would like to see
Jesus!” And He's even closer to us than He was to them—because
although physically He is now in Heaven seated at the right hand of
the Father, He is really present in the Blessed Sacrament and each of
can know Him directly, not having to settle for merely learning about
Him from our friends and relatives. All can know Him! To know God!
To be in a loving relationship with the creator of the universe, “Who
would not desire this every morning, in every moment of life?”
And
yet somehow it doesn't seem that simple. Yes, He is present in the
Blessed Sacrament, and yet perhaps we would prefer a voice to come
from heaven, like the one that some in the crowd around Jesus mistook
for thunder.
Now,
“In
certain exceptional moments, we have all had an experience
of that kind,” and
experience whereby we know with certainty that God is present. Or at
least, I hope each of you has had that experience at
some time. If not, my heart breaks for you. If you have never had a
deep and meaningful encounter with God, then beg Him to reveal
Himself to you today in the mostly Holy Sacrifice of the Eucharist,
following the example of Christ as St. Paul portrays Him to us in the
Letter to the Hebrews: 'offering prayers and supplications with loud
cries and tears to the one who is able to save you from death, and
you will be heard because of your reverence.'
I
think asking for this experience is important because 'Only
a faith arising from life experience and confirmed by it … is
strong enough to survive in a world where everything, everything
seems to point in the opposite direction.'
For
most of us, though, I imagine that 'in
some
exceptional moments, we have had an experience
of that kind: but we wonder how it can become stable.'
At
first, our relationship with God can be dramatic: “When the love of
our life enters into your existence, you are ready to give your life
for it.” And yet our relationship with God, like any relationship,
has its ups
and downs,
highs and lows. Not
because God ever abandons us, but because something changes within
ourselves. Our relationship begins by asking, with the flame of
desire burning in our hearts, (excitedly)
What next!? What do You have in store for me today!? “Then,
over time, after years of belonging, the dramatic question becomes,
(dejectedly)
'[Now
what]?'” Now what?
It's
not that I necessarily doubt my previous experience of God or reject
my faith in any way. I acknowledge that, in some general or
theoretical way, God is 'calling' me, that I am in a relationship
with God, but I don't really know what that means so I end up just
going through the motions, week after week. I show up to Mass every
week and I do the Catholic things and I say the Catholic words but
“Mere
words […]
do
not help us get by.”
If
we're stuck in a rut, spiritually, we have a problem, and we need
help. But “Rather
than seeking […]
help
[…]
we limit ourselves to comments, often of an intellectual nature.
So,
what's wrong with my relationship with God? Why is my prayer so
ineffective? “It's
the way the liturgy is done; it's the way this person near
me is praying so very annoyingly; it's the way this child of mine has
recently acted towards me; it's the economic difficulties that fill
my life with worry.”
But
at the end of this list of complaints “our
dissatisfaction remains, and we ask ourselves what should be done, as
if the solution were outside ourselves.”
The
English author G.
K. Chesterton was
once asked to write an essay with the title, “What's
Wrong with the World?” His
response was just two words long. “What's wrong with the world?”
He wrote simply, “I
am.”
For
some reason, we think that the problem with our relationship with God
is someone else's fault, something we can't control. But that is not
true. “The
question is not banal: are we still seeking [God],
or have we stopped?” If
we have stopped, if we've given up our quest for a deeper
relationship with God and have grown content with merely going
through the motions, then let us offer
prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who
was able to save us from death, Who
is able to save us from our nothingness,
able
to
give us meaning and purpose!
“The
crucial question is to understand how
God calls us, because otherwise we talk about God in the abstract.”
Let
us return again to that first encounter, “When the love of our life
enters into your existence, you are ready to give your life for it.”
Why
does God let this experience fade? Why doesn't God allow us to feel
that surge of religious emotion intensely and continuously?
God
wishes to teach us that “Life can be even more profound than this”
“We
are ready to give our life … but there is an even greater sacrifice
[than this heroic/romantic
impulse. There is an even
greater sacrifice than this],
which is giving your life according to the how
and the when that He
decides.”
“Our
first activity [in hearing God's call] is passivity, [even the words
we use imply this—God
calls, so I listen!
Passivity,] accepting, receiving, acknowledging that
everything is given” to us by God.
Everything
is given to us. God gives us all our circumstances. These
“Circumstances are the [way in] which [God] calls us.” He has chosen to insert us into the universe at
this moment, in this place. And the Lord, the One Who at this very
moment is creating the reality in which we live, tells
us, 'Look, these
circumstances that
you do not understand, that seem so dark to you, this
is way in which
I who make all things have
chosen to build your life, to help you to mature, to make you yourself, to rekindle
your desire, and to make you present to the present.'
God
wants to make us present to the present. If we only appreciated the
great gift of our present circumstances, circumstances over which we
have no control whatsoever, we would flourish.
Last
week
I had
the
opportunity to visit some of my favorite parishioners. I
don't mean to insult anyone by the comparison, but last week I was
blessed to
visit the Ontario County Jail. I have never left the jail without
being inspired by the people I meet, and a little ashamed of the way
I live my own life of prayer. People I meet in the jail are always
telling me about how they've deepened in their relationship with God,
and not because of some great experience of conversion after whatever
sin or crime landed them in a correctional facility, but because
they've established a routine: “I get up at the same every morning
and say these prayers...”. Here are people whose circumstances,
objectively speaking, seem pretty horrible. They have very little
say over what they do or when they do it. Yet they have accepted
those restraints, embraced those circumstances, and so have found a
way to grow closer to God in their situation.
Similarly,
I recently read the story of a woman whose life was turned
upside-down when she had a daughter with Down Syndrome. Now this was
a very Catholic woman who never in a million years would have
considered having an abortion (as so many do when they discover their
family life will not turn out the way they imagine), but “all
[…]
my
good Catholic openness to life,” she
writes,
“is not enough”.
“I need a reason for living what exists,” a
reason for living day-by-day the difficulties her daughter's
condition requires of her.
“It's not that I need someone to tell me that my daughter is of
infinite value” (I
know that when I look into her eyes. Rather, I need
Jesus.) Acknowledging that God has given us our circumstances makes
all the difference, and not just intellectually: “the
difference is in the gusto
that comes from the consciousness that the
Lord is calling me here,
and not where I thought I would be.”
This
is how God calls us. Maybe we don't understand why, but this is how
God calls us. It's not without reason that at every Mass we refer to
Christ's presence among us as the Mystery
of Faith!
“But
at times we don't want this method: […] In the face of the
challenges of the current circumstances,
which often shock us, [Our temptation] is to give into fear, thinking
we can reach unity [with
God]
[…] 'exonerated from risks.' We do not believe the circumstances
were given to us by the Mystery, by the Lord of time and history, so
we could re-acquire the truth.”
But
this is how God calls us.
“The
only condition for being truly and faithfully religious […] is
always to live reality intensely”.
“In
the presence of a […] culture which gives top priority to
appearances, to all that is superficial and temporary, the challenge
is to choose [to] love reality.”
“Either
we understand this, or all the […] challenges we have to face have
nothing to do with our journey, and even become an obstacle.”
For
the Christian, “Nothing
[in
life] is
to be […] censured, forgotten, or rejected,” because
these circumstances are the means by which God has chosen to call us.
Our
relationship with God cannot stay at the level of the dramatic
emotion where it may have been after our first encounter with Him.
“Unless
that initial ring of truth ripens into maturity, we can no longer
bear, as Christians, the enormous mountain of work, responsibility,
and toil to which we are called.”
But
if we accept that our circumstances are the way in which God calls
us, if we live with gusto
every moment of every day because we expect to find God's presence
there, then “You
[become]
more
and more fascinated, [and]
you
become more and more yourself.”
Jesus
says in the Gospel that “Whoever loves his life loses it,”
because if we imagine that we can only be happy with our life just as
it is, or just as we wish it would be, invariably we will be
disappointed. But He also says that “Whoever
loses his life for my sake will find it,” (Mt 10:39) because if we
are willing to give up our preconceived notions of what's best for us
God will show us why his path for us is greater than the one we would
have plotted for ourselves, difficult as his way may seem.
As
we prepare next week to celebrate Holy Week, when Christ himself was
betrayed and crucified, are you willing to lose your life for his
sake?
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