Right after Epiphany Sunday which celebrated the joyful
truth of God’s manifestation to all nations and to each and every one of us to
assure us of his fidelity to the covenant, we can now move on and continue to
reflect deeply on this invitation to a loving relationship with this God who
communicates and reveals Himself.
This Sunday, we can speak of the invitation to intimacy
with God. For most of us believers, God
is present in our lives but great are the odds that we see Him as a distant God
watching us from afar or as a God of providence who becomes especially real to
us in times of dire need. Today’s readings reveal a God who calls us, who
initiates a loving relationship with us, who invites us to intimacy.
God calls us
through the voice of restlessness. The young Samuel, in the first reading
(1 Sm. 3: 3-10, 19), experiences some restless nights trying to discern whose
voice it is that calls him. Twice, he mistakenly believes it is Eli’s voice.
Only on the third instance, with Eli’s guidance, that he recognizes the voice
of God calling him. In the gospel reading (Jn. 1: 35-42), the first two
disciples of Jesus find themselves in a restless search, perhaps, for something
to which they can meaningfully devote their lives. Jesus confronts them: “What are you looking
for?”
Restlessness is a universal human experience. At some
point in our lives, we all find ourselves searching for something that can give
us peace, contentment, and meaning. This
spurs us on to a frustrating exploration in life looking for happiness in money
and possessions, in our achievements and honors, in power and influence, in
pleasure and easy gratification. Some quite desperately and sadly settle with
destructive addictions.
But restlessness can be the voice of God calling us to
Himself. Like Samuel, we need to listen
to God’s voice: “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.” Or like the first
disciples of Jesus, we need to face him and answer bravely his question, “What
are you looking for?” We can be helped
tremendously by spiritual guides—like Eli and John who led Samuel and the
disciples rightly to the direction of God.
Spiritual directors, as we call them now, can assist us in discerning
the voice of God in our experience of restlessness and sorting out the
authentic voice of God from many other voices that are there to confuse and
mislead us.
God invites us to
intimacy with Him. Only in God can our search be over. As the famous line of St. Augustine’s
confession goes: "You have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you."
God desires that we rest in Him, that we spend time with
Him. Again, after Samuel recognized God’s
voice and came to Him with an open and listening heart, the first reading
states, “Samuel grew up and the Lord was
with him.” In the gospel, the
disciples received Jesus’ invitation: “Come and see.” This is an invitation to intimacy... an
invitation to spend time with God and to know Him quite personally... not as a
distant God... not as a “spare-tire God” whom we remember only when we are running
with a flat tire.
Amid the hurly-burly of our crazy contemporary lives, we
experience a growing emptiness or restlessness. If we are not guided properly,
we can be very careless and senselessly plunge into an ultimately destructive
coping mechanisms and addictions that offer us nothing but bottomless pit of
emptiness.
Today’s readings remind us of God’s standing invitation—“Come
and see...” “Be with me...” “Whatever you do... you can do it with me.” Our restlessness is but a longing for
intimacy with a God who is just too happy to be known and be recognized. May we sort out, from the many voices that
drown us every day, the real voice of God inviting us to intimacy with Him.
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