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SCRIPTURE
READINGS
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Ezekiel |
2:2-5 |
| Psalm |
122 |
| II
Corinthians |
12:7-10 |
| Mark |
6:1-6 |
Happy
those who have had experience of God. Happy those
who have progressed beyond the world of faith and
the arid wastes of reason and actually tasted and
felt and seen something of the nature of God. Most
of us are compelled to walk by faith. Even Saint
Paul who had enjoyed the experience of a transforming
vision on the road to Damascus , could write: "We
walk by faith not by sight" (2 Corinthians
5:7).
Even
so, despite the fact that for most of us the vision
of God is a treasure laid up for the life to come,
when we shall know even as we are known, we do recognise
that the mind and the head are by themselves inadequate
vessels or instruments for achieving that for which
God designed us in the first place, for which we
are meant and made. How can we transcend the necessary
but constricting limits imposed on us by our earthly,
time bound condition and rise into the felt presence
of God?
We
can at least make a beginning by realising a truth
brought out by Pope Benedict XVI in his Introduction
to Christianity that our Creed is not simply
a statement of truths we believe and accept. It
is more than that: it is a belief IN them. It is
a personal commitment to them and a desire to make
them our own. Perhaps in the language of Cardinal
Newman
in his Grammar of Assent the life of religion
is a movement from notional to real assent. That
is an assent not simply to abstract propositions,
like ' Great Britain is an island' but an affirmation
of our adhesion to those we know and love.
It
has been said that the aim of the religious and
indeed of the Christian life is the movement from
the head to the heart and also that this is the
longest journey of all. We have to travel, as it
were, the opposite journey from the disciples of
Christ. They experienced Christ and tried to grasp
something of the mystery of his person. By contrast
we have not been so gifted as were the first followers.
But
we do have their experience to go on. We have the
gospels and the other writings of the New Testament.
By exploring prayerfully the Bible, by trying to
live up to the high demands the gospel offers us,
by receiving the sacraments, we are brought into
a relationship with Christ. This may not strike
us as the type of experience for which we long,
but we are on the way there and hope should carry
us along until the great vision promised us is ours
and then we shall indeed see and be transformed
in the process (see 2 Corinthians 3:18).
Fr
Anthony Meredith SJ
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