The most and immediate implication of opening up our lives to our Lord Jesus Christ and allowing Him to become flesh in our lives is our thirst to understand who we are and where are we going. Gen. 3:9 Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, 'Where are you?’ Imagine the Lord of lords, the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God can't find Adam? Of course not, it was not a question of the physical location of Adam, but a question that demands Adam to search his heart. It was actually two significant questions and not one. The first about his origin and the second about his end. A search that all of us children of Adam and Eve continue to ask ourselves to this day. Do we know where we came from and know where we are going? They are inseparable questions and both belong to God, whatever happens in between is what we call our conversion process which we bring with us and present before Him when we stand humbly in the judgment throne of God
The lives and teachings of the apostles are our living testament of the power of the Holy Spirit. They are decisive for the meaning and orientation of our life and actions. Unless we fully understand both, we will never find the meaning of our existence and we will continue to drift along the tide of whatever our culture asks us to do. When we understand these questions and find the answer, nothing should bother us. The stock market can drop a thousand points in a day, flight maybe delayed or cancelled, favorite team can lose, plans can fall apart, lose a job, diagnosed with a big C...etc... but our joyful outlook and deep inner peace will remain. I believe God created us with some kind of a homing device right there in our hearts. This maybe what St. Augustine was thinking when he said that 'our hearts are restless until if finds rest in God.'
Man was created by God who is the source of all good. In His goodness, he created us so we can share the eternal joy of being with Him. We are in pain without really knowing and understanding it when we are separated from God. God is perfect and does need anyone or anything to be complete but for lack of righfully expressing the image in human language, let me say - God feels the same pain as Jesus expressed in the parable of the Prodigal Son.
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| Parable of the Prodigal Son |
We have been away and God all this time has been longing for our return. I got to experience this feeling of longing in an incident that happened with my 7 year old son, Tim who is in grade 2. I used to pick him up from school at 2:40PM. One day while I was doing errands, I felt some kind of craving for a Tim Horton's coffee. Being away from Canada for 3 years, I could not help but give in to the craving. I went and ordered a premium black coffee and a donut. I was enjoying every sip and bite when I realized that it was almost 3:00 PM. I literally jump out of the store and heaven knows how many traffic laws I have violated rushing to the school. I arrived at the street which is empty by that time. There I could see him, shoulders dropped, walking and wandering in the field, his back against me. I see him clearly and the image will probably be eternally imprinted in my mind, but from a distance, I could feel his pain, and this feeling I will eternally remember. I called out to him but the field was wide and open and he was too far from me and could not hear me. I started running towards him while calling out his name and finally he turned around, saw me and called out to me too....Abba! Like a motion picture, everything seemed to slow down like in a slow motion movie clip while we run towards each other and finally ended in each other's embrace.
Abba is a word of endearment for a father. Jesus taught us to call God - Abba Father and this is one moment I could relate that He is not teaching us some grammar or some historical or geographical lessons on relationship. He is trying to teach us that the answer to question he asked Adam is to come home to His loving embrace. We have forgotten where we came from and we have lost our sense of direction and the surest way to start afresh and new is to come back to the loving embrace of our Abba Father.
He is waiting for us to come and meet Him. He awaits us in the Eucharist not just as a cultural phenomenon that most of us do as we come only during Christmas, Easter and special occassions of our lives. He awaits us in the confessional box that we have tried to avoid for so many years as if we are the most perfect, sinless human being that have not committed any sin in our lives. He knows our pain and we can't hide it from Him and His invitation continues to echo deep down in our hearts.
So then, let this Christmas be a different one for once. The baby Jesus is coming, He promised the Holy Spirit for those who asks. Let us come and meet Him and experience the joy of His embrace.
