deacon's corner

As we prepare to celebrate our nation’s birthday we give pause to consider the fundamental principle upon which it was formed. What was created was a thing entirely new. Never in human history had a nation been so conceived. At its core lay the premise of individual human sovereignty: that man was created by God to be free. Free to dream. Free to breathe. Free to pray. Free to live.

There is an old proverb first attributed to John Heywood in 1562 which states “Out of sight, out of mind.” It is a simple thing to ignore God.  He created us, gave us free will, and then stepped aside so that He might enjoy the show. God showed us all that He had created and gave us dominion over it. God is and never has been a nag or a scold. He has, for the most part, left us to our own devices. He placed us in charge of His creation, told us to take care of it, manage it, and to be good stewards of His bounty. But I’m sure that there have been moments when He has wondered whether He has perhaps made a serious mistake.

One thing I know is that God never feels the need to rush into things; after all, He is beyond time and place; what will happen, is happening, and has happened. I also believe that He has a marvelous sense of humor and derives no small amount of enjoyment in observing our feeble attempts to do things on our own without His love and support.

In the beginning God created man and woman and since they were all alone God kept company with them and spoke with them directly and often. After all, they had been created by Him in His image and they had many questions to ask of their creator. There was no television, radio, iPods, cellphones, or computers to occupy their time or overload their senses. The quiet solitude of the garden provided the perfect setting for having casual and intimate conversations with their creator; nothing to interrupt or distract them from their close relationship with God.

A mystery may be characterized as “any truth that is unknowable except by divine revelation” and unknowable is defined as “impossible to know, especially being beyond the range of human experience or understanding.” It is only through our arrogance and conceit that we refuse to acknowledge the existence of divine mystery and the reality of the unknowable. Current scientific thought professes with absolute certainty that the unknowable is simply knowledge yet to be discovered; that the unknowable is merely the unknown; that mystery is just a puzzle awaiting a solution.

We are taught, typically during preparation for the sacrament of confirmation, of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety, and Fear of the Lord. It is that seventh one that often gives us pause for we find it difficult to reconcile our belief in a loving, caring God and Father with the imagery of terror and dread, of retribution and punishment.

In Ordinary Lives, Extraordinary Mission, John R. Wood writes “If you don’t become the saint you were created to be, you can’t play your part in God’s plan for salvation. If you don’t play your part in God’s plan for salvation, it won’t get played. If your part doesn’t get played, I assure you, souls may be lost!”

“If today you hear His voice, harden not your heart” Psalm 95 calls us to open our hearts, to listen with a willing and honest ear to hear God’s voice. How often do you hear God’s voice? If we listen – really listen – we will hear God speak to us every day, in a myriad of ways, through many different voices.

How do we describe the indescribable, visualize the invisible, know the unknowable? We can speak of God only through the inexactitudes of simile or metaphor. We use ‘light’ to express the Glory that is God, to sing “Christ, be our light”, and to describe the goodness that is found in our souls. An example can be found in The Book of Revelation “The city had no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gave it light, and its lamp was the lamb” [Rev 21:23]. The absence of good – that is, evil – can be and often is expressed by the absence of light, or darkness.

“I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another” [Jn 13:34]. Jesus tells us to love one another as he loves us, but this is seldom as easy to do as it is to say. I recently saw this firsthand and the experience is worth the telling.