We began our retreat with the question, “What was your experience of your father?” Some said their dad seemed always preoccupied with work and kept a distant to them. Others said their dad seemed to be an exacting supervisor ready to catch and reprimand them when they made a mistake. Still others experienced their dad as a passive observer watching their mom run the house.
What was the point in this question? We know that we have a tendency to see God the Father as an enlarged version of our earthly dads. Or, if we have had formal religious education, we may see God as an abstract idea—the one presented by teachers.
The purpose of the retreat was to open us up to experience the living God, just as he is—apart from projections of our fathers and abstracts learned in the classroom.
Today’s readings reveal a true picture of who God is and stir a desire to know him.
Psalm 139 (1-3,13-15) tells us:
“O Lord, you have probed me and you know me; you know when I set and when I stand; you understand my thoughts from afar…with all my ways you are familiar.”
A God passionately involved in our lives, interested in the details of what we do and what we think, “familiar” with us—as we as we are with “family” members.
“Truly you have formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb.”
An attentive knitter, putting love and care into each stitch. We are created by the artistic hands of the divine “knitter.” How precious we are to him.
“I give you thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made; wonderful are the works of your hands.”
He makes us feel great about ourselves, knowing that we are one of his many masterpieces—nurturing a self-esteem built, not on our own achievements or status in life, but on our true identity as wonderful works of his hands.
Our gospel reading is a familiar one—the story of Jesus in the home of Martha and Mary. When Martha tried to manipulate Jesus into getting her sister off the floor and into the kitchen, Jesus said (Luke 10:38-42):
“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”
Jesus, the perfect image of the invisible God, tells us about who God is. He prefers to sit down, maybe for hours, and talk with us—a God who cherishes relationships more than achievement. In three words the Apostle John told us who God is: “God is love.” At this moment God is busy loving me in as many ways as he can. He wants each of us to experience him as he really is. Even suffering frees us to experience him more deeply.
“The Lord is good to those who hope in him, to the soul that seeks him” (Lamentations 3:25).
