20 October 2014
Monday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time
I taught theology for many years at a university. After a number of years, I began to become restless: there was much talk about God – after all, that is what theology is – but I began to wonder: does anyone here really know God? With a wistful spirit I began hanging around the department office and asking: “Has anyone around here seen God lately?” Perhaps naturally, I eventually moved on.
I had come to see that theologians are really rather like the scribes of which Jesus spoke – theologians have rich storehouses, full of ideas, and the good scribe can bring treasures new and old out of the storehouse. This is certainly helpful and needful. But without contemplation it can be a bit like accumulating recipes without ever cooking or eating.
We have one life in this world and we are taught to “seek God while He may be found.” Our world encourages us to start running and keep running, accumulating all sorts of things, endlessly running. But if we are blessed, something happens that allows God to “get a word in edgewise” – and begins to free us up from those possessions we certainly cannot take with us when this earthly sojourn is completed. By grace we are saved (Ephesians 2), God’s gift of saving faith freely given to us. Let us then turn from accumulating things – and ideas – and seek the face of that God who is steadily leading us toward our eternal home.