Wednesday, 7/17/13
Today’s readings turn our thoughts toward knowing God. Old
paintings pictured heaven by showing God as a benign old man enthroned above, but
even our little children know that God the Father had no human body. More than
any other image, the burning bush that Moses approached in the first reading
gives something like a true picture of God. While wrapped in raging flames the
bush still plays host to its greenery and its flowering buds. In that way it echoes
God’s ability to hold the fiery stars in one hand while cradling a child in the
other.
Jesus, in the Gospel, said that he alone could make the
Father known to us. That reminds me of a story about St. Justin before his
conversion. As an accomplished scholar of Plato and Aristotle, he had come to
believe in the one God. Then, walking on the beach one day around the year 100
A.D. he fell in with an old Christian. The old man teased him by saying, “By
your philosopher’s robes I can see you know all about the one true God; but you
do not actually know him, do you?
After Justin admitted that he had no actual contact with
God, the old man introduced him to Christ and Christianity. Then, as a baptized
Christian Justin came on a life of such contentment, that he opened a school in
Rome for leading people to God through his Son.
Jesus said, “No one knows the Father except the Son and
anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.” That leaves us asking, “How might the Son reveal the Father
to us? Does he somehow reveal the Father to us in the depth of our souls?"
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