May 5, 2023
“I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned, you have revealed them to the childlike. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will.”
– Jesus
When someone we love dies, if we’re people of faith, our first thought may often be like St. Martha’s when her brother Lazarus died: “Jesus if only you had been here,” this would not have happened.
Throughout history, great thinkers have tried to explain how God thinks. From Augustine of Hippo to Thomas Aquinas, from Teresa of Avila to Edith Stein, from Henri de Lubac to Karl Rahner, from Pope Gregory the Great to Pope Benedict XVI. Much of what scholars and theologians have written, ordinary people don’t understand, and it’s no consolation in their darkest and loneliest hours after a death.
That’s why, God, in his infinite wisdom, sent Jesus to show us the way. That’s why God became a human like us to experience what we experience. And that’s why Jesus always looks to the heart of a person and doesn’t judge the way that people judge.
It’s not necessary for us to know how God thinks. It’s only necessary for us to know God loves.
“If God were attainable with intelligence, how unjust it would be!” wrote the late Carlo Carretto, who went to live in the desert as a Little Brother of Jesus. “It would have made easy the task of the wise and the great of this world, and would have made knowledge of God all but impossible for the little ones, the poor, and the ignorant. But God himself has found the way to be equally accessible to everybody. He comes in love, in that faculty which we can all share. He loves equally queen and peasant, wise and ignorant.”
Do you want to find God? Read less and love more. And remember Jesus’ words, spoken in sincerity for those who grieve: “Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
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If you want to find Jesus, the first step is to realize he has always been looking for you.