“You do not know Him, but I know Him because I have come from Him and it was He who sent me.” Question: Do you know God? Let me rephrase the question: Do you know God or do you know about God? Many years and many moons ago, when I was still a sweet 16 year old in St Patrick’s School (not that I have turned soured!), I have a good friend who was interested in this girl from Katong Convent, and he was essentially trying to woo her in a sixteen year old manner. So instead of returning home after school, I waited with him at the bus stop outside St Pat’s, opposite Katong Convent for this mysterious girl. So while waiting I asked my friend, “Do you know her?” My friend then rattles off her name, her age, the class that she was in, what’s her stream, the ECA (now known as CCA) she was in and even her favorite pop song. I was impressed, given the fact that it was a non-internet, non-mobile and non-Facebook era, and asked him how long they have known each other? And my friend sheepishly told me, “Actually, I haven’t even spoken to her before.” I was dumb-founded, and I remarked “Ahhh, so you only know about her lah, without actually really knowing her.” Sometimes in our spiritual life and in our relationships with God, with Jesus, we may find ourselves in the same position as this friend of mine. We know about God. We have knowledge about God. However, this knowing about, this knowledge does not necessarily translate into knowing God, into having a relationship with God, with Jesus. It is something very cerebral and nothing personal. Lenten preparation does not consist only in giving alms, fasting and praying to be faithful and steadfast. Lent is also a time to examine our relationships with Jesus and asking ourselves whether “do we really know him?” and if we do, at which level? The head or the heart? In the Semitic / Jewish mind “to know” is more than just something cerebral, at the head level, but it is really at the heart. The question “Do you know God?” is actually best translated into “Are you intimate with God” very much as how a husband and wife shares intimacy in their conjugal love. Many of us like the Jews in today’s Gospel would say “we all know where he comes from, but when the Christ appears no one will know where he comes from” this implies that while the head knowledge is there, but the experiential knowledge is not there. Jesus’ identity is dependent neither on human reasoning nor on human testimony but on the testimony of the Father, and his relationship with Him. Likewise, our faith is proven not through intellectual knowledge about who Christ is, but it is authenticated by the relationship about who Jesus is in our lives and how he is acting in the manner that we speak, act and live. Knowledge is promoted by the world and in a way it belongs to the world, but wisdom is given and graced by God and belongs to God. It is wisdom that purifies knowledge. Let us therefore not walk the false way, and put the Lord to the test, as how the impious people in the First Reading did, but rather let us cast ourselves into the loving embrace of God, and embrace life and holiness that the Lord so desires to give to each of us. “The Lord is close to the broken-hearted; those whose spirit is crushed he will save. Many are the trials of the just man but from them all the Lord will rescue him.” Let us walk not just in the way of knowledge, but let us walk together in the wisdom of intimacy. Rise, let us be on our way. (Homily given at Holy Cross Church on 4 April 2014, Fourth Week of Lent - Friday)
Posted on: Fri, 04 Apr 2014 16:33:59 +0000
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