Not only not dead. Nor is he simply alive and kicking. He is actually
intervening in our lives every step and moment of the way. This is the
fundamental truth we need to disinter from the graveyard of our
memory.
He is at the very core of our being. He is in everything that exists
around us. As St. Augustine once said, while to know where he is may
be difficult, it is even more difficult to know where he is not. He is
in the air, in the light, in the darkness, and both outside and inside
us. He is everywhere!
While he is infinitely supernatural to us, a hard reality worsened by
our human condition weakened and damaged by sin, there is always in us
a flicker of a divine longing, precisely because a link vitally exists
between Creator and a creature made in his image and likeness and
adopted as a child of his.
No matter how broken that vital link may be, we can still manage to
see glimpses of God's presence and power, his wisdom, his goodness and
providence in the most unexpected circumstances of our lives. Our
consciences, no matter how torn, cannot totally muffle God's guiding
voice for us.
The mystery of God that is made more mysterious by our sinfulness
should not be a hindrance in our belief in God's existence. If ever,
that liability could and should be turned into an asset, and later on,
hopefully a capital we can use to feed our continuing awareness of
God's presence.
That mystery should not stop us from dealing with God. On the
contrary! It should spur us to ever look for him, believing in what
Christ told us that it is in asking that we shall be given, in seeking
that we shall find, in knocking that the door shall be opened to us.
It's our choice to make, of whether to live by faith, a divine gift
that binds us with God, or by our own reasoning, our own estimations
and devices. Let's hope that we know what to choose, and not be
confused by some problems, difficulties and failures.
The other day, a friend theorized that perhaps it's not good to be
very serious about religion. He said that a number of supposedly good
and holy men turned out to be monsters. They personified the wolf in
sheep's clothing.
He mentioned not only a string of very embarrassing scandals involving
priests in many countries found to have molested children. He pointed
to the most painful discovery that a founder of a religious group
known for religious conservatism and orthodoxy was later discovered to
have committed ugly crimes.
He fathered children by different women, and worse molested his own
son. Could God really exist with these anomalies in high and holy
places, he asked. Are we not just making things up?
The observation is truly a painful fact and we cannot deny it. But
once I heard it, my thoughts turned to the gospel truth of Jesus
choosing among his disciples one who would betray him, and Christ is
supposed to be God who knows everything.
It's a mystery that defies the most elevated level of our human logic.
I know that God respects and lets himself to play along with the
twists and turns of human freedom. I also know that we can be most
vulnerable to the most heinous kind of crimes when we let ourselves be
spoiled by God's precious gifts to us.
But why should such things happen? Could not the almighty God, in whom
nothing is impossible, not prevent it? The Catechism answers this
question by saying that:
"God can sometimes seem to be absent and incapable of stopping evil.
But in the most mysterious way God the Father has revealed his
almighty power in the voluntary humiliation and Resurrection of his
Son, by which he conquered evil." (272)
It's still a mystery. But then again, the mystery, if handled with
humble faith, actually helps us to see God and to feel and experience
is constant interventions in our life.
It's with faith that we can get glimpses of God in the simplest events
of our lives. It's the kind of faith that asks, that seeks, that
knocks. Not the kind that simply waits for miracles, since miracles
happen only when we go to Christ begging and confessing that we are
nothing without him.
Let's believe then, so we can see God. Let's not get entangled with
our reasonings.
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