ORIENTED
TOWARD GOD
There are no techniques or methods that automatically guide you to God. But there are attitudes and gestures that can dispose and prepare us to encounter God. Even more. The most beautiful words and the most brilliant stories about God are useful if each one of us opens ourselves to God. How so?
What’s most important to orient ourselves toward God is to invoke God from the depth of our heart, all alone, in the intimacy of our own conscience. It’s there that you open yourself trustfully to God’s mystery, or else decide to live alone, like an atheist, without God. But can you invoke God when you don’t believe in God and aren’t sure of anything? Charles de Foucauld and other non-believers began their search for God with this invocation: «God, if you exist, show me your face». This humble and sincere invocation , made in the midst of darkness, is probably one of the purest paths to make us sensitive to the mystery of God.
In order to orient us toward God, it’s also important to eliminate from our life whatever impedes us from encountering God. If someone, for example, has the idea that he knows everything and already understands the final mystery of reality, of humanity, of life and of death, then it would be difficult to seek the truth about God. If one lives tormented by various fears or buried in hopelessness, how can she open herself confidently to a God who loves her without end? If someone is enclosed in his own selfishness and only feels coldness and indifference towards others, how can he open himself to a God who is only Love?
In order to orient ourselves toward God it’s important to maintain the desire, to persevere in the search, to keep calling out, to know how to wait. There’s no other way of walking toward the Mystery of the One who is the fount of life. The story of the wise men highlights in many aspects their exemplary attitude of seeking the Savior. They know how to get going on the journey toward the Mystery.
- They know how to humbly ask,
- how to overcome moments of darkness,
- how to persevere in the search
- and how to adore the God incarnate in the fragility of a human being.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
