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. Many of us are probably unfamiliar with this book of the Bible. It is the shortest of St Paul’s letters, not organized in chapters, containing only 355 words in the original Greek. St Paul wrote this letter while he was in prison himself. 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 started out being a prosecutor of Christian, wanting them to be arrested or to be killed. But 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 visited the Basilica of St Paul outside the walls of the ancient city of Rome, I got to see a piece of the chains that enslaved Paul when he was in prison. Paul became a spiritual father to many of the faithful, nurturing them in the faith. He calls Onesimus his spiritual son in the faith, his own very heart.
For Paul, God was not an ambiguous concept or a far away being in the heavens. Jesus was his Lord and Savior. Jesus led Paul to the faith and to salvation. Like Paul, we modern-day disciples of Christ, are on a quest for the living God. We are called to 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 modern world see belief as being incompatible with our search for the truth just as the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche did. The Church teaches us that we are on a journey of faith 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 emeritus 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 daily reality. This book talks about how different people have different experiences of God in daily life. For example, many Hispanic Catholics experience God in a special way in their lives as the God of fiesta, through their joyful fiestas and social gatherings, and through a special devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is seen as Our Lady of Guadalupe by Mexican Catholics. She also talks about how the poor of the world often see God as Christ suffering on the cross, how uniting their sufferings with Christ’s sufferings, they can feel a sense of liberation in the midst of a harsh lived reality, a liberation that can lead them to work together to improve their lives here on earth.
We priests experience God in our lived reality in different ways as well. Recently, I have had several friends ask me where I get strength and encouragement from God in my lived reality. Number one I would say that my love of the Eucharist and love of the sacraments keeps my grounded as a priest. The Eucharist feeds me on many different levels. And knowing that I bring the Mass and the Eucharist and other sacraments to my parishioners and others in my different ministry is very edifying. God is also present to me in my study of Scripture and spirituality and in the many books I read. Through my reading and my studies, God is very present to me in a very real way.
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, experience, and celebrate in our relationship with God and on our pilgrimage through life. 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. I think it is good for all of us to reflect upon how we encounter the living God in the reality of our journey of faith.
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