A man was on a flight to Rome. Feeling bored, he turned to the passenger beside him and began striking a conversation. He was very impressed by how polite, friendly, and engaging this passenger was. He was even helpful enough to call for the air stewardess when he noticed another passenger looking pale and nauseous. When they arrived at the airport in Rome and reached the arrival gate together, his flight companion was greeted by a lady, “Good morning Father O’ Neil. Welcome to Rome.” Realising that the person he had been conversing with was a priest, he turned to him and asked, “Why didn’t you tell me earlier you were a priest?” The priest then smiled, and politely replied, “If you are unable to tell from seeing, then why should you believe by hearing?”
It is not enough to know God just by hearing about Him. We only start to really know God, by seeing Him, as revealed in His Son Jesus Christ. Only by seeing and following what Jesus did in our lives, can we then start to understand and believe in Him and His love for us.
The scripture verse from 1 John 2:3-4 tells us that:
“We can be sure that we know God only by keeping his commandments. Anyone who says, ‘I know him’, and does not keep his commandments, is a liar, refusing to admit the truth.”
‘To know someone’ in the biblical context is not just the result of an intellectual process. Rather, it is the fruit of a personal encounter with the person. For God, only by keeping His commandments, by following Jesus in the way He loved the Father and His neighbour, only then can we encounter God whose love then comes to perfection in us.
As we live each day trying to be open to a personal encounter with God and to keep His commandments, let us pray for ourselves in the words that the psalmist of psalm 138 proclaims:
“O search me, God, and know my heart.
O test me and know my thoughts.
See that I follow not the wrong path
and lead me in the path of life eternal.”
May we, by seeing and following the path of Jesus, know God fully, so that the world may come to know God not merely by our words, but by seeing God reflected in us and in the church today.
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Stay tuned for the next post by Br Martin Arlando on 22nd Sep 2010.
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