CRACKS
All too many people today don’t bother believing in God. It’s not that they reject God. It’s that they don’t know what path to follow to encounter God. And yet, God isn’t far away. Though hidden in the very interior of life, God follows our all too often wandering or hopeless steps, with respectful and discrete love. How to perceive God’s presence?
Mark reminds us of the cry of the prophet in the middle of the desert: «Prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight». Where and how to open paths for God in our lives? We shouldn’t think of splendid and spacious ways through which a spectacular God comes. The Catalonian theologian J. M. Rovira has reminded us that God comes close to us seeking the crack that a person keeps open for what’s true, good, beautiful, human. Those are the chinks of life that we need to pay attention to in order to open pathways for God.
For some, life has become a labyrinth. Busy about a thousand things, they move around and get agitated without stopping, but don’t know whether they’re coming or going. There opens for them a crack toward God when they stop to encounter what’s best in themselves.
There are those who live a «decaffeinated» life, flat and insignificant in which the only thing that’s important is to be entertained. They can only glimpse God if they start to pay attention to the mystery that beats in the depth of life.
Others live submerged in «the foam of appearances». They’re only concerned about their image, what’s apparent and external. They will find themselves closer to God if they simply seek the truth.
Those who live fragmented into a thousand pieces by the noise, the verbiage, the ambitions or the hurry, will only make way toward God if they make the effort to find a guideline that humanizes their lives.
Many go about finding God if they know to pass from a defensive attitude before God to a posture of welcome, from an arrogant tone to humble prayer, from fear to love, from self-condemnation to being open to forgiveness. And everyone will make more room for God in their life if they seek God with a simple heart.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
