Knowing God

If you knew Me, you would know my Father also (Jn. 8:19).

 

...it is love that I desire, not sacrifice, and knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings (Hos. 6:6)

 

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The cover of Give Us This Day for March is the image of a wood carving of St. Joseph with the Christ Child, from St. Wilfred's Church in England.  The artist has captured on Joseph's face the most beautiful expression of serenity and love for the child he holds in his arms.  And the child returns to his earthly father the expression of contentment, peace, and unconditional love. 

 

Our Father in heaven was never content with our man-made, made-up, images of Who He Is.  He was never content with being worshipped from afar with sacrifices, whether of burnt offerings or human sacrifice, or slashing ourselves with knives, as did the Indian tribes of South America.  God has always wanted man to know Him. He has always desired the kind of communion with us portrayed in the wood carving mentioned above.  He has always wanted to hold us in His arms, protecting us from all harm, loving us with every fiber of His Being.

 

Jesus said, Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent....for you granted him authority over all people, that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him (Jn. 17: 8 & 7).  Mankind, however, has always preferred his own images of God to the true knowledge of God As He Is.  Man has always wanted his idols, the ones he carves himself, to the revelation of Who God Is.  The evil that is natural to man's heart pushes away the Truth about God (the "living water") and replaces it with "broken cisterns" that we make for ourselves.  The Greeks imagined the gods in their own image; they loved their jealous, philandering, lustful, and demanding gods.  I would say that every culture, every tribe, has continued to create a god in its own image and likeness.

 

Jesus came as 'the exact image of the invisible God."  He came in the flesh, that we might see, handle, touch, smell, and taste the love of God for us in the flesh, just as Joseph was able to hold the child in his arms and gaze into the eternal love of God for him.  If we cannot know God from studying and knowing Jesus Christ, we will never know any god except that which we create for ourselves, or the god someone else has created and handed on to us. 

 

A deacon in New Orleans recently told a group of teens about a close friend of his whose wife developed a serious illness shortly after they were married.  The young wife is paralyzed, blind, and deaf, and her husband is her caretaker.  "This is not how he expected his marriage to turn out," the deacon told the teens.  "For the past 31/2 years, he comes home from work every day to bathe her and feed her.  "He told me, 'That's what I do, Josh. I'm in love with my wife.  That's why I do this.  I can't take a vacation from the vocation God has called me to."

 

The deacon left the conversation with his friend and went back to the seminary, kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament:  "God," he said, "can I ever love You the way my friend loves his wife?"  Deacon Johnson said, "There was a silence.  And so I shut up.  After that, I heard Him say, 'Josh, will you let me love you like that?" (from the Clarion Herald, Mar. 22. p.3).

 

Jesus told Peter that if he (Peter) did not allow Jesus to wash his feet, Peter would have no part in Jesus.  Peter's pride crumbled in the face of such love from his Master, the One he had already confessed to be "the Son of the Living God."  Peter relented, allowing Christ to wash his feet, a preparation for the forgiveness and greater washing that was still to come.  If we do not admit that we are spiritually ignorant, paralyzed, deaf, and dumb, if we do not allow the Christ to wash not only our feet, but our head and our hands and our souls, we will never come to know the living God either.  If we do not let Him love us, we will continue to feed our hunger by creating other idols to worship, idols that tell us to slash ourselves or to offer our children as holocausts.

 

If we would know God, we must allow Him to love us the way Jesus loves us.