Lent - Week 03c
God is always by our side
(From Conversation with God, Fernandez Carvajal)As Moses tended the flock of his father-in-law Jethro near Mount Horeb, the holy mountain, God appeared to him in a burning bush. There Moses was given the extraordinary task - his life's work - of leading the chosen people out of the slavery of Egypt into the Promised Land. God confirmed him in his mission with these words: I will be with you. Moses little imagined how closely God would be accompanying him and the people in the midst of the trials and tribulations that awaited them.
In our lives too, God's presence at every moment is something we can scarcely fathom. It takes on even greater definition when God sees us on the road to holiness. He is like a father minding a toddler. Jesus Christ, true God and true Man, is always reminding us in the Gospel of God's paternal concern. He alone can do this, since no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. The Son knows the Father in the very knowledge by which the Father knows him. There is no greater intimacy than that. This identity of knowing and knowledge bespeaks the unity of the divine nature. In claiming it, Jesus revealed that He was God.
As the Son, one in substance with the Father, He is also able to reveal the Father's relationship with and attitude towards us, and in particular his goodness in granting us the gift of the Holy Spirit. The mystery of the Blessed Trinity is at the heart of what He had to reveal to us, and with it and in it we find the wonder of God's fatherhood. During that last evening in the upper room, when He seemed to be summing up those years of self-giving and trusting revelation, He said: I have manifested your name to the men whom you gave me.
To manifest someone's name really meant to reveal his mode of being. Our Lord has revealed to us the depths of the Trinitarian mystery: the fact that God is a father, so close to us men. Jesus is always using the title 'Father', both in private conversations and in his preaching. He dwells on the goodness of the Father, who rewards our slightest action and recognizes our good deeds, even the ones that no one sees, who bestows his bounty upon the just and the unjust, and who is always aware of and concerned about what we need. The word 'Father' is like a constant refrain on Our Lord's lips. This Father is never far away, no more than would be a father who sees his little toddler alone and in danger. If we try to please him we will find him by our side. When you really come to love God's Will you will never, even in the worst state of agitation, lose sight of the fact that our Father in Heaven is always close to you; very close, right next to you, with his everlasting Love and with his unbounded affection.
God didn't just make us and then leave us, like a painter with his painting. He is a father to us, and has even brought us to be partakers of the divine nature. The Father's desire was that we should be called children of God; and so we are. Being children of God is not some thing we achieve on our own; it is a gift from God. Pondering this will make us thank him often every day. The sense of our divine filiation will be at the root of our joy and confidence in carrying out the mission God has given us. In it we find assurance in the face of difficulty and anguish. Father, my Father, we will find ourselves saying, savouring that gentle but strong word 'Father', be it at times of joy or of danger. Call him 'Father' many times a day and tell him - alone, in your heart - that you love him, that you adore him, that you feel proud and strong because you are his son.