SEARCHING FOR MEANING AND HAPPINESS:
3. WHO IS GOD FOR ME?
FAUSTO GOMEZ OP
After answering the first question, Who Am I, and the second, Who Are You for Me, we try to answer the third question: Who Is God for Me?
After trying to answer the questions on my personal and social identity, we need to at least touch on another question, the most radical one: Who is God for me? As I said earlier, I am a religious person (aren’t we all. in a certain way?). I am a Christian. God is my creator and the Creator of the whole creation and of all its creatures. He is my – our – Father.
It is becoming clearer theologically, philosophically, even sociologically that faith in God (religion in general) helps much in being and becoming happy, in particular in being able to carry the cross of our life, which is part of every human life on earth. God is the only Absolute of my life – and prayerfully yours!
The rocky grounding of true happiness or at least of less unhappiness is belief in God, and a life of humble prayer and compassionate love. Love means love of God and love of neighbor. Love of neighbor entails love of all: as God’s love is not selective, mine should also be universal. Among all neighbors and without excluding anyone – not even the enemies -, I try to love the needy and the poor. Why? Because each one of them is, in a special way, “Christ”: “I [Christ] was hungry and you gave me food; thirsty, and you gave me a glass of water; sick and you visited me…” (cf. Mt Chapter 25).
My God is also the God of hope, the giver of hope. Life is a journey to him, and I hope that we shall be saved by his mercy. God is the object of my hope, and union with him and family and friends and the poor, the goal of this earthly life.
On my journey of life, I am at time worried, at times forgetful of God, at times I may lose my limp on he way. (St. Thomas Aquinas says that to walki limping on the way [Christ] is much better hatn to walk rapidly outside thre way). Still, and always, God is there for me – for you - in Jesus Christ, who died for us all. Why am I attached to persons, to things, to my selfishness when God is what matters most? In him everything has a sense: work, suffering, the cross - and hope! Here on earth God is in charge, and I am in the best hands I can be.
How essential it is for me to question myself often: Who is God for me? Saint Catherine of Siena knew the answer well – God’s answer! God told her: “You need to know two things only to be happy: Who are you, and who am I?” God is the beginning and the way and the end of my life. Indeed, for a believer, “only God satisfies our longing” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Conferences on the Creed), “God alone suffices”: “solo Dios basta” (St. Teresa of Avila, Poem).
Our quest for happiness is a mysterious search for God – for heaven. Thomas Merton: “There is only one happiness: to please Him [God]. Only one sorrow, to be displeasing to Him, to refuse Him something, to turn away from Him…” (The Seven Storey Mountain, III. Cha. 3, iv). Vatican II: Man, creature of God is called by God “as a son to intimacy with God and to share in his happiness” (GS 21, $ 3).
At the level of grace, the human being is a theological being. He/she is a child of God One and Triune. Created by God, wounded by sin, redeemed by Christ, renewed by the Holy Spirit, called to heaven, to rise from the dead, and live with God, and in the company of the saints. For the Christian, every person is a brother or a sister for whom Christ died (I Cor 8:11; cf. CCC, 1931); every neighbor is “as another self” (GS, 27).
As a theological being, the human person is an eschatological being: Destined from its conception to eternal beatitude (CCC 1703). But he or she is a wounded creature – a sinner! The human person is a being towards death: finite – mortal being. Heidegger defined the human being as “a being for death.” For him, the proper name of human beings is “mortal.” Mortal, yes, they are: not only mortal, but also “immortal.”
Indeed, our quest for happiness is a mysterious search for God – for heaven. “Thou have made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee” (St. Augustine, Confessions).
I believe in God, in the God of Jesus Christ, who is One God and Three Persons (Father, Son and Holy Spirit). I am a Christian! Who is a Christian? A Christian is a baptized person who is faithful to his/her baptism. A Christian is a person who knows God as Father, confesses Jesus Christ as Son of God and a Man-for-others, and experiences the Holy Spirit, who tells him or her that Jesus is alive, that we are called to live in him, and that outside him there is darkness (O. González de Cardedal, 1979). The Christian believer is a follower of Christ, the perfect human being (cf. LG)
I am a Christian by the path of St. Dominic de Guzman for whom – as for all saints – Christ was the center of his life and mission: “Never asking for reward, he just talks about the Lord.” Thanks God, I am a Dominican priest of the Missionary Province of Our Lady of the Rosary. The motto of the Order of Preachers (OP) is: “Contemplari et contemplata aliis tradere”: To contemplate and to pass on to others the fruits of contemplation. Preaching, indeed, is our priority of priorities: a preaching supported by community life, nurtured by study and strengthened by prayer. I try hard to be faithful to my Dominican vocation. Just like you to yours, I try to be faithful to my vocation.
What does it mean to be faithful? It means to do what each one of us has to do every day, and to do it with love. Is it hard to be faithful? It depends of your heart.
Where is my heart – and yours? The story of the old man climbing the Himalayan Mountains: “How will you reach the peak in this kind of bad weather?” “My heart got there first, so it is easy for the rest of me to follow.” May my – your -heart be in God.
And to conclude. Who is God for me? He is my God and your God, my Father and your Father.
“God is love.” When all said and done, what really matters in life – in your life, in my life, in our life - is to love with a genuine love that includes freedom and justice and truthfulness – and a great respect for life. Love is the primary moral principle, value and virtue of life. Happiness in this life is really to love God and others: “In the evening of life, we shall be examined on love (St. John of the Cross). ###