“Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Last words of Christ in St. Matthew’s gospel)
The glorious promise comes to us as the last words of Jesus Christ in the gospel of Matthew. All who are baptized in His name shall never be alone. This guarantee gives meaning to the theology of covenant. In a gospel written by a Jew about a Jew, the message is to the Jew and Gentile alike—whether you grasp the meaning or not, nevertheless, it is something you can rely on. The loving Lord never will impose His will upon those who want nothing to do with Him; but for those who do, here is the ultimate insight.
If you wish to shut God out of your life and do it your way, and if you don’t open the door of your heart, even at times of grief, confusion and alienation from others and yourself, it is possible to live like this for all your life; yet you are still His guest on the earth He created, enjoying the very life you assume, which He goes on giving to you. But if or when you realize that something is missing in the deepest part of your existence, you may discover that all true meanings come through accepting Jesus Christ the Son of God and surrendering your whole self to Him totally. You will come to know God as a friend.
Why then ignore His constant presence and intention to find you and make you His own? I’ve encountered those who feel that all religion is for the immature. They feel themselves above and beyond the “need” for a personal deity. Once when Napoleon asked Pierre-Simon Laplace why there is no reference to God in his treatise on the universe, the renowned scientist said, “I have no need of that hypothesis.” Such atheists like Laplace are called humanists. In general terms, they believe that humans have evolved intellectually in progressive stages: At first by magic they thought to control what they feared, then by prayer and sacrifice they appealed to the deities, and finally they have graduated to atheism—awareness that there are no gods, nothing beyond human consciousness. It’s not 20th or even 19th century science. It’s thousands of years old. To convince them under their conditions, from a purely scientific perspective is possible, but difficult and challenging. Like St. Thomas, they will believe only by sight, not by insight. It begins by proving they have a soul—not from beyond, but from within.
Why if God loves them as He does us, doesn’t He prove He exists? The answer lies in freedom. Even to believers He is present incognito. He waits to be found, welcomed and received into our hearts. He never imposes. He understands how and why we ignore His ever-presence. We must first find our true selves before we find the Lord. He recognizes the instinct to discover who we are by separating ourselves from all who we are not, including parents, siblings, relatives and friends—at least for a while. Before we surrender ourselves to God, we must take possession of our true selves. If we are connected to others, to fantasies, illusions and to sin, we have no true self to offer Him. Watch a toddler squeeze fat fingers from a parent’s hand and wobble off away—it’s a basic instinct. We all do it in other ways through stages of growth.
We Americans especially take pride in our individualism. We cherish our independence. In our schools we are trained to assume nothing, believe nothing without testing, and challenge tradition. We reflect on all relationships. In an interesting irony, we are obsessed with love in all forms. We insist that each of us has the right to fall in love with whomever we please, even contradicting what is considered by traditional religions as unnatural, including homosexuality and the natural affection of a pregnant woman for her unborn child. Many demand that the government endorse the experiments in pseudo-love that humanists consider moral, while true believers insist these to be contrary to instincts of affection and aberrations of traditional values of a normal society blessed by the Almighty.
And all the while Jesus is waiting to be received into the hearts of both believers and humanists.