L.J. shares the following reflection on Sunday's reading from the Gospel according to Matthew:
We cannot escape God for the divine is present in everything and in all our experiences. To plug into this experience is true joy!
Perhaps we can all relate to the experience of fretting over a bill while driving, or while making dinner. Then, all of a sudden, we feel a soft kind of guilt over missing Mass or not setting aside time to pray. We might feel as if we failed God, or that we are not religious or spiritual but too preoccupied with “worldly concerns.” I want to suggest that the very experience of fretting over a bill, of making dinner, of driving to and from work, and, indeed, all the everyday experiences that make up our days, are chock full of the presence of God. Therefore, we can experience God right where we are, right now. Do not misunderstand me, though. One can experience God powerfully at Mass. I am, rather, attacking the view that we can only meet God when we’re in church. Of course, we can experience God in church, but all-too-often we forget God is just as powerfully present in our homes, our workplaces, and deep within our very selves.
Here, Karl Rahner, the great German theologian of the Twentieth Century, offers us a wonderful theological insight: we cannot escape God. We cannot avoid experiencing God. There’s no person, relationship, or activity that lacks the divine presence. It is inescapable because of God’s omnipresence and transcendence, which means God simultaneously transcends creation and is inconceivably and intimately present to it. The mystery beyond existence humbly draws close to us in gracious love.
his follows from one of Rahner’s core ideas, namely, the supernatural existential. This is a term that signifies God’s self-gift to all. “Supernatural” means it is the gift of God’s own divine self; “existential” means the situation in which all people find themselves. This is universal grace: God’s self-communication through the Holy Spirit is given to every human being. In today’s Gospel Jesus lists signs of the divine presence transforming people: “the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.” These are signs of our universal and immediate experience of God; indeed, all the good things of life point to the absolute incomprehensible mystery. If you have a human being, you have God’s self-gift of the Holy Spirit to that human being. The only humans who de facto exist are humans created through and unto Christ—graced humans.
The experience of God is different from all our other experiences, for it is not something added to our lives. God hides in everything we experience. Dropping the kids off at school, washing dishes, and sipping on a beer all have God at their core. Only, we are constantly experiencing God without knowing it. To know it, there is a need to let go and to give oneself over in faith to the holy mystery through Jesus Christ Crucified and in the Holy Spirit. God is so basic to our lives, so fundamentally real, that God goes unnoticed. The reality of God does not stand out apart from all our various daily experiences. God is mystery, after all, and so is not one more thing to experience like we would experience a drive through the city, playing a game on a smartphone, or talking to a friend.
So, what does this mean for us? It means everyday life is shot through with the divine grandeur and beauty. Nothing on earth, nothing in our solar system or, indeed, in the universe, lacks the divine presence. God is the immediate and absolute mystery, so immediate and so close that wherever we turn we experience this divine mystery.
Since God is inescapable, every moment – not just every day – we can live in the divine presence. Thomas Keating says, “The mystery of God’s presence all the time…a moment to moment basis…living always in the presence without effort…slip into as you let go of the obstacles…the chief obstacle to the presence of God is just thinking God is absent.” We slip into living moment by moment in the mystery of God as we let go and the chief obstacle is thinking. God is always available, but we are not always available, we are tremendously distractible, especially because we get caught up in our thinking. We don't have to think about God to be in God's presence.
The whole point of the Gospel might be summed up as consciously living in the mystery of the divine presence moment by moment. And this brings us joy, the everlasting joy and gladness of the Gospel. To rejoice in God is to experience the divine presence in all things.