Searching for God

 

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Where did God go? It’s a question many of us have asked in serious trials, in spiritual dryness, and in the most difficult temptations. Of course, we know in our intellect that God, who is omnipresent, hasn’t gone anywhere; that He tells us in the Scriptures that He will be with us “until the close of the age.”^[1]Matt 28:20 All of this registers in the head… but it’s often in the heart that we are groping in darkness, searching for Him whom we love.

More than once, I have said, “Jesus, if I could just sit with you for half an hour and have a chat, I’d be good to go.” Of course, it would never be enough — I’d ask to sit with Him again and again. So, He remains hidden to my senses, even if all of creation sings His love song to us each morning. 

I was pondering how even in the Garden of Eden, before the Fall, God remained hidden. Adam certainly felt His presence, described in a somewhat delightful way:

They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day… the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. (Genesis 3:8)

 

Finding God — in Community

Still, the Lord saw that Adam was “alone.” And so He created Eve:

The LORD God said: It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suited to him. (Genesis 2:18)

God always intended that we would find and experience Him, to one degree or another, in fellowship with one another. Jesus closely linked the commandments, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart…” with “love your neighbor as yourself.”^[2]Matt 22:37-39 It’s as though our existential completeness is only accomplished in this communion with God and others. Love of neighbour “closes the circuit,” as it were, letting the life of God flow through us to those around us (this is true even for the religious hermit, who loves His neighbor through intercession and penance). 

While I have addressed this elsewhere (see footnotes), it’s important to stress once again the necessity of authentic Christian community — fellowship with other believers. If you are searching for God, there is one place you are certain to find Him:

For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. (Matt 18:20)

Thus,

…the Christian community will become a sign of God’s presence in the world.—Ad Gentes Divinitus, Vatican II, n.15

This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:35)

There are numerous reasons why man today is perhaps more lonely than ever — technology being one of them. We have replaced presence with texts, our voices with emails, our active listening with “likes.” We have never been so “in touch” with each other and yet so out of touch.

I like to say, then, that community is the “eighth” sacrament. How many times have I experienced the Lord’s presence — His love, healing, renewal, wisdom and assurance through community! This is God’s intentional design from the very beginning of time, a design that finds its fruition in the Body of Christ!

The Church in this world is the sacrament of salvation, the sign and the instrument of the communion of God and men. —Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), n. 780

Perhaps this initial reflection on community is actually a nudge from the Lord to some of you to seek out like-minded believers who are on fire for Jesus. For the Lord promises He will meet you there: wherever two or three are gathered in His Name.

 

The Pain of Nada

But community is only one instrument of God’s presence. The Eucharist, of course, is the pre-eminent Presence of God with His People. If you want to be with Jesus, just go to your local Church and sit before the tabernacle or monstrance.^[3]cf. Real Food, Real Presence As the Curé of Ars would say:

I look at Him and He looks at me. —St. John Vianney, CCC n. 2715

But when you or I say “Where did God go?,” what we really mean is that we have lost all sensible and spiritual experience of His presence — even before the Eucharist. We feel dry, uninspired, flat. Our times of prayer are difficult… Mass is a drudgery… trying to focus on God is a battle filled with distractions and boredom. We may even feel this wherever two or three are gathered in His Name!^[4]See Part Four of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on all the dimensions of prayer, including the interior battles and their often hidden purposes. So, what’s going on?

In truth, there comes a point when the Father says to each of His children: it’s time to move from crawling to walking, from walking to running, and from running to soaring in the spiritual life.^[5]Deuteronomy 32:11-13: “As an eagle incites its nestlings, hovering over its young, so He spread his wings, took them, bore them upon His pinions. The LORD alone guided them, no foreign god was with them. He had them mount the summits of the land….” It actually has little to do with the emotions and feelings. Rather, it’s about drawing ever deeper into the heart of God and into union with Him and the Divine Will. As St. John of the Cross would say, we must eventually pass through “nada” — nothing —attachment to nothing, including spiritual consolations, in order to arrive at pure union with God. There is no full communion with the Divine without this purgation.^[6]Purgatory is not a “second chance” or a third option between Heaven and Hell. It is the essential divine process of purifying a soul that is already saved, of sanctifying a person who is not yet perfect in love, although he is justified by grace.

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower. He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit. (John 15:1-2)

So look, perhaps you are experiencing this desert precisely because you’ve been bearing fruit, and need to be further pruned to bear more! It’s a sign that God is calling you into the deep. Still, it is painful, and for most of us, it is a lifetime process of God revealing little by little our idols and the wounds they cause.

On this growth in the interior life, books and treatises have been written over the centuries, so I will move on to the central point of hope to those of you living in the sorrow and trials of this present desert…

 

Thirsting for God

You can count on this with absolute certainty: if you seek God, you will find Him. 

I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me. (Proverbs 8:17)

The Douay-Reims version says: “I love them that love Me: and they that in the morning early watch for Me, shall find Me.” It’s the idea that, from the first moment of waking, we put God first; we “seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.”^[7]Matt 6:33

The keyword above is to do this diligently. Jesus put it this way:

Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. (Luke 11:9)

But what’s on the other side of the door?

Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, [then] I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me. (Revelation 3:20)

Actually, the Catechism has something profound to say about this knocking, you on one side of the door, and Jesus on the other:

It is He who first seeks us and asks us for a drink. Jesus thirsts; His asking arises from the depths of God’s desire for us. Whether we realize it or not, prayer is the encounter of God’s thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for Him. (CCC, 2560)

If you accept this, it changes everything. If you say you are searching for God, know that He has been searching for you first all along… 

 

Where Are You?

But you know, if the first thing we seek in the morning is our phone, our email, social media, and the daily news… no wonder we end up losing our peace and the sense of God’s presence — before we’ve even had breakfast! We have turned away from the Living Well to drink, more often than not, from the world’s sewer. 

As it turns out, after Adam and Eve fell in the Garden, God had a question for them: 

Where are you? (Genesis 3:9)

Yes, we get ourselves into unnecessary messes; we choose sin; we jump at every distraction; we choose the fleeting temptations of this world… and then when we feel empty and disillusioned. We don’t feel like praying. We feel a little more dead inside, if not ashamed that we just scrolled away our time instead of spending it with the Lord or doing the duty of the moment. And so,

Adam answered, “I heard you in the garden; but I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid.” (Genesis 3:10)

St. John of the Cross wrote that, “A bird can be held by a chain or by a thread, still it cannot fly.”^[8]op. cit ., cap. xi.  (cf. Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book I, n. 4) God wants us to fly into His presence, into His arms, but we have chosen our idols and comforts instead. We want to serve both God and mammon — and we’re miserable for it — because we deprive ourselves of a true friendship, a relationship with God.

No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. (Matthew 6:24)

Which is why the Book of Wisdom begins:

He is found by those who do not test Him, and manifests Himself to those who do not disbelieve Him. (Wisdom of Solomon 1:2)

If you feel that you have somehow “lost God,” or that He has wandered away from you, ask yourself sincerely: “Or is it I who has wandered away from Him?” If so, there is Good News:

…when you seek the LORD, your God, from there [the place of idolatry], you shall indeed find Him if you search after Him with all your heart and soul. (Deuteronomy 4:29)

It is to return to your “first love,” loving God even when you feel nothing.

Or maybe you have not wandered away from God at all, but are living in sincere fidelity to His Word, and yet, your spirit is dry. Either way, this path of perseverance, while feeling “nada,” is the infallible way to finding God again. 

Love is the source of prayer; whoever draws from it reaches the summit of prayer.—CCC, 2658

 

Related Reading

The Sacrament of Community

Community… An Encounter With Jesus

A Crisis of Community

Unless the Lord Build the Community

First Love Lost

 

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