"Blessed is Your Holy and Glorious Name, O Lord God!"
Today's Mass Readings
As human beings, how much can we know God? Opinions differ on this matter. Some would claim that God is so beyond human categories that any knowledge about is both insufficient and impossible. As Christians we believe that Jesus was the Son of God and in his incarnation we do know some things about God for certain. Thomas Aquinas suggested that one can know but not in His totality of being. He also said that what we do know about God is by analogy i.e., God is not really father in the same way that we have human fathers. Rather, God is ‘like’ a father. In any case, the human capacity for the knowledge of God is the main theme for today’s reflections. Readings such as the first reading today stress the “mystery” and the incomprehensibility of God. God comes to his people – but on the top of the mountain and covered in dense cloud. Human beings cannot lay their eyes on God and still live. Even Moses only got to see God’s back. Also notice the sense of awe and the sense of the sacred that surrounded God’s arrival.
The gospel reading continues the same theme. Even though Jesus was God’s Son and he came to reveal God to us, his message was shrouded in parables. The verse, “You shall indeed hear but not understand, you shall indeed look but never see…” may give the impression of a certain divine injustice. The real, however, meaning is that God is serious business. It is not enough to seek God like we do the ordinary things of life, such as employment or a meaningful relationship. Human striving for God must transcend ordinary striving. Thus, even though Jesus came to reveal God, at the cross only a handful recognized that the crucifixion of Jesus was indeed the revelation of a loving God. One of them was a Roman Centurion. As Jesus would say, such people are blessed. “But blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear.”
In our spiritual life we must strike a balance between an unhealthy fear of God and careless abandon. There is no need of an irrational fear of God because Jesus has revealed God to us as a God of love. On the other hand, we must avoid casual abandon regarding spiritual things because God is God. God is awesome. In our secular world we are tempted to treat the Church and a club in the same manner. If the readings are telling us anything, it is this developing a “sense of the sacred” can help us truly know who God is and know who we are.