It is interesting how our technical maturity manifests itself in our speech and thinking. If they escort a child out of the house, they don’t tell him: I love you, may the angel protect you, come back to me healthy… Rather, they say on the run: Do you have the keys?; you have it ready for lunch…; didn’t you forget anything?; I’m running… If we add economic thinking to it, we also put the question in relationships: What do I get out of it? This is especially so in extramarital relationships. Or even in them? We are not surprised that this also resonates in our relationship with God. What is our religious, catechism, and especially theological speech?! In today’s first reading, we heard: Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love has not known God, because God is love.
It says that we are born of God. However, we speak of baptism, in which we are born of God, as a sacrament – you see – as a thing. With her, we received: Sanctifying grace, cleansing from original sin, the light of Jesus, the name Christian… It sounds like these are things – albeit spiritual. It’s all true. But! Isn’t this about something more? I am glad that recently it is emphasized: We have become children of God, we are brothers, we form one family – the Church… We go from things to relationships. John said it nicely: We are born of God. And it reminds me why. Because: God’s love for us was manifested in the fact that God sent his only-begotten Son into the world so that through him, we might have life.
And Jesus behaved like that. He had time for people. He devoted himself to them, he thought about them: When Jesus saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things. When he told them about the kingdom of God, he did not tell them that they would have a blessed vision through sanctifying grace at death… But he told them that it would be like a royal wedding – a feast. He didn’t even tell them that much about it, but he prepared a feast for them. So, what is our relationship with God? Let’s call him Heavenly Father. Doesn’t it happen that we just ask something from him, do we find time to pray because it is an obligation, or do we build a relationship with him? Yes, we are children of this time. Technical, economic, or whatever you want to call it. But let’s create relationships. Both to the Heavenly Father and to people. Let’s find time for them.
