What struck me in our readings today was the 2nd reading from St
Paul’s letter to Philemon. This is the
only time in our lectionary cycle when we hear a reading from this letter. I bet many of us in the pews don’t really remember much about this book of the
Bible. It is by far the shortest of
Paul’s letters, not even being organized in chapters, and containing only 355
words in the original Greek. What strikes me about this letter is that Paul wrote it while he was in prison
himself, probably in Rome. But Paul is
not interested in his own safety and well-being, but rather in the well-being
of the runaway slave Onesimus, who was returning to his owner, Philemon. Paul’s journey is so interesting, as he started out being a prosecutor of
Christian, wanting them to be arrested or to be killed. And now he is willing to do anything to
spread the Gospel to the world, even to go to prison for the sake of the Gospel. When I was in Rome a few years ago at the Basilica of St Paul just outside the
walls of the ancient city of Rome, I even got to see a piece of the chains that
enslaved Paul when he was in prison. Now, Paul is a spiritual father to so many of the faithful, nurturing them in
the faith. He even calls Onesimus his
spiritual son in the faith, his own very heart.
For Paul, God was not some ambiguous concept or some far away being in the
heavens. Jesus was his Lord and
Savior. Jesus led Paul to the faith and
to salvation. Like Paul, we the modern-day disciples of Christ, are on a quest for the living
God. We seek out God in the reality of our lives. Unfortunately, that is not how many in our modern world see it. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once
advised his sister Elizabeth to take a new path, to take risks, to go on a
search through life as if no one has gone there before. He told her: if you want peace of soul and
happiness, then believe, but if you want to follow the truth, then seek. Many in our world see belief as being incompatible with our search for the
truth just as the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche did. But our faith tells us that all of us are indeed on a journey through life. We are all on a quest for the Living God. God is alive in so many way in our lives, in
our Church, in our faith. The book of Wisdom in our first reading tells us that it is hard sometimes to
figure out those things within our grasp here on earth, so how do we search out
those things that are from heaven? In our faith, we see Jesus as a light who illuminates our search through life,
who helps us on our journey of faith, who keeps us on the right path.
One of my favorite Catholic books that I have read in recent years is Quest
for the Living God by Sister Elizabeth Johnson, a professor at Fordham
University in New York. She explains
that whereas learning all the doctrine and dogma of the Church is important,
whereas going to mass each week and participating in the liturgical and
educational life of a parish community are essential to our Catholic faith,
what is equally important is where we experience God in the lived experience of
our daily reality. I have shared with you many times that I
experienced God in my missionary work, in serving street people and drug
addicts in an inner city soup kitchen in Canada, in serving the people of the
rain forest jungle region on the northern coast of Ecuador in South
America. As a priest, I have experienced God in a special
way in my ministry to men and women who are serving time in prison, in my
interactions with them. Elizabeth Johnson’s book talks about how Hispanic Catholics experience God in a
special way in their lives as the God of fiesta, through their joyful fiestas
and social gathers, and through a special devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary,
who is seen as Our Lady of Guadalupe by most Mexican Catholics. In reflecting upon our quest for God in our
lives, in reflecting upon Paul’s own journey and how he helped and nurtured
others in their own quest, the important thing to remember is that this quest
continues throughout our entire lifetime.
There is always so much to learn about God, so much to discover and
experience and celebrate in our relationship with God and on our pilgrimage
through life. And the more we continue our search for God
and help each other out on that search, our life of faith will be all the more
richer for it.
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