Word to the Wise
Thursday, January 6, 2011 - St. John Neumann, CSSR - Bishop
[1 John 4:11-18 and Mark 6:45-52]If God so loved us, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us. [1 John]
The Letters of John can have a rather soothing effect with their soaring words about loving God and having God within us if we simply "love!" However, as we will discover in tomorrow's first scripture, our relationship to God cannot be separated from our relationship to neighbor! Each side of this coin has to be seen in the "light" of the other. Nevertheless, we need to pay some attention to our personal relationship to God apart from its partial expression in our relationship with our neighbor.
One way to look at this is to consider the experience of some of the great "mystics" of Christian tradition. Individuals like St. Teresa of Avila or Meister Eckhart (Dominican) have left fairly extensive records of experiences that a dedicated and intentional person may develop with God. It is important to remember that "mysticism" is not something confined to an elite group of people. We are all called to holiness. Some of us follow that call with a particular intensity that can be incredibly rewarding. The average Christian is not likely to have the time and circumstances that will permit this kind of intensity, but we can never eliminate the possibility.
Another way is to look at our patterns of prayer. We pray TO God and we pray WITH our neighbor. Yet both are ways of encountering God. So, the relationship is a very different one even though both relationships can be very close. In prayer we encounter God in a very different fashion than we do in our neighbor. The danger comes in separating the two. How do we pray TO God each day (or do we?), and how do we pray with our neighbor or encounter God in him or her! Is he or she the one we colorfully spoke to in traffic when they pulled in front of us?
I have spoken here before about a painting I have of a young man out in a field getting ready to throw a rock at the sky in the hopes of hitting God! He is "enraged AT" God but he is also "engaged WITH" God. I would not want him to throw the rock at his neighbor in the hopes of hitting God! God can handle our rage, but our neighbor may not be able to. We are going to look further into this subject tomorrow, I just wanted to point to the importance of giving God our personal attention "one-on-one" while recognizing that things don't stop there! AMEN
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