AWARENESS OF GOD’S PRESENCE
Monday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
My dear encountered couples:
The woman suffering from hemorrhages who touched Jesus is a reminder to us to be grateful that we always have Christ to reach out to. He does not merely pass by once in our lives as he did with this woman. He is always right with us. We are never without him. That’s a big part of the good news. Right with us at all times are the riches and the power of heaven. We are never without security; we are never without love.
But I’m afraid that what we are sometimes without is exactly what we need to be able to realize we are not alone. We often come up a bit short on Faith. We find it hard to believe that God is always with us. We might feel his presence at Christmas and again at Easter, we might even have some great personal experiences of his presence at other times of the year, but none of us feel him with us all the time. Our feelings give only brief experiences of someone wonderful momentarily passing by. Faith alone connects us with the reality of the ever-present Christ.
So what do we have? We have to remember that Jesus IS here – within each of us. Jesus continues to speak through each of our words and to act through each of our choices. Our faith is made manifest in our everyday words and our everyday works. Our faith can be as true as that of the suffering woman, and that of the official for his daughter. We have the power to use our deep faith for the benefit of the other. But we – I – may lack the courage to do so.
We need to practice our awareness of “God with us.” We need to acquire the habit of picturing Jesus next to us, in front of us, behind us, within us. We need to picture him at the frontliners serving the victims of the coronavirus; we need to recognize him at the wheel of the cars driving along with us on the road, in the person bagging our groceries at the supermarket. He’s there. We just have to get used to seeing him in those places, in those people. If you look hard enough you might even spot him in your television screen. Where is God? God is everywhere. He’s especially with you.
