Come Before God

Saturday, February 7th Readings Reflection: Saturday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

In today’s Gospel, we hear of Jesus taking the Twelve Apostles away to a deserted place so they could rest. While they were traveling by boat to this place, a crowd hastened before them, so that when they arrived, they found not a deserted place but a great crowd of people. These people had traveled far and were likely quite tired, having traveled by foot. Our Lord had pity on these people, and rather than sending them away, He began to teach them.

A medieval Byzantine archbishop, in his commentary on this Gospel passage, writes that we should learn from the example of the crowd: “[D]o thou not wait for Christ till He Himself call you, but outrun Him, and come before Him” (Catena area). The archbishop continues by explaining the people were spiritually starved by the Pharisees, but rather than despairing or falling away from their faith, they instead turned to Our Lord, “the true Shepherd, [W]ho gave them spiritual food, that is, the [W]ord of God” (Catena aurea).

We see in these people a desire for the truth that is found in each human heart. Pope St. John Paul II writes about this universal desire for the truth in his encyclical on faith and reason, Fides et ratio. The pontiff points out that only “by knowing and loving God” can men come to properly know themselves (Fides et ratio, introduction). Throughout history, man has sought the answer to this question through a variety of means, in a variety of places. However, we know from the Gospels that only one way is the truth—that is, Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is the way, the truth, and the life (cf. Jn 14:6).

Our desire for the truth, like the restlessness in our hearts, can only be satisfied in God. We cannot love what we do not know, as St. Thomas Aquinas famously said, and thus, we must know God in order to love Him. Our finite intellects cannot comprehend his omnipotence this side of Heaven, where we shall behold His essence in the beatific vision. Nonetheless, we must seek to know Him Whom we love, in Whom is found the answer to the deepest questions and longings of our hearts.

Each one of us will stand before Christ the Judge at the moment of our deaths, but if we have spent our earthly lives running away from Him, our souls will likely be in a frightful state. May we instead spend our lives seeking God, not waiting for the moment of our deaths when He calls us from this life, but coming before Him in the Eucharist and Confession to seek His mercy and life-giving grace.

Madonna and Child with Saints Dominic and Thomas Aquinas, by Fra Angelico. Public domain.