No one likes to be manipulated.  Anytime anyone feels the oppression of or duping by another, the dignity and esteem of another person is lessened and altogether disregarded.  If the maxim, “we are with God as we are with others” is true—and I think it is—we might stop to think about how we perceive God in the totality of how we engage in living in God’s life of truth and love.

            We live in a time where God is manipulated.  Too often too many people drop God’s name to get their point across and to appear to speak with authority; absent is a reverence for the Divine Name or the person that name connotes.  Generally speaking, such arguments that invoke the Holy are lacking in resemblance of the Spirit, truth, and nature of God that we hear about in today’s readings and throughout the Bible.

            Scripture and experience reveal that God is first and foremost a being that we relate to as we would person-to-person; God shares the characteristic of person-hood—three-actually, which we identify as Father, Son, and Spirit, words and titles that Jesus used to help us understand that as human beings we are most alive when we are in relationship with another person.  While language limits our talking about the nature of God and causes us to fumble and seem helpless, an attempt to explain or relate to the Divine demonstrates not only the mystery of God, but the awesomeness that comes with knowing someone, of being affected in real and lasting ways because of  that relationship that, if healthy, encourage us to grow and be changed for the better.

            Jesus tells us in the Gospel reading today that there is so much more to know about God—so much more to understand, digest, learn, and grow into.  We are made in God’s image; we have no right or place to make God into ours.  Indeed, language and our limited capacity to think and pray and go about life is fallible and more so, feeble.  Still, we ought to remember that first and foremost God’s desire is to be in relationship with us, just as the three persons of the Trinity are in perfect relationship with each other. 

            Let us remember each other in prayer this week.      +Eric J. Knapp, S.J.