God reveals himself in Scripture.

WE ARE ALL CREATED in God’s image and likeness and have an inner desire to be united with our Creator. This is manifested, among other things, in a constant effort to get to know him better. However, our intelligence alone cannot gain access to its innermost secrets. Therefore, the most profound things we know about God are what we have received through Revelation, what He has made known to us through inspired writers and prophets, and above all, through His own Son.

When the apostle Philip asked Jesus to show them the Father, the answer was immediate: “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9). Christ is the image of the Father. The invisible God who appeared to Moses as a burning bush now has a face and hands. In addition, he appeared as a child in Bethlehem to a shepherd (cf. Lk 2, 16-18), as a teenager among the teachers of the Law (Lk 2, 41-50), as a penitent before John the Baptist (Mt 1, 4-11). His many manifestations are an image of the Triune God who walks among people. For this reason, one of the best ways to know God is to read and meditate on the Gospel.

St. Josemaría wrote: “Every time I preach in front of the nativity scene, I try to look at Christ, our Lord, as a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and placed in a manger on straw. And even though he is still tiny and doesn’t talk, you can see the Master and the Teacher in him. I need to look at him like that because I’m supposed to learn from him. And so that you and I can learn from him, we must try to get to know his life – read the Holy Gospel and meditate on the scenes described to us in the New Testament to uncover the divine meaning of his earthly journey” [1]. When reading the Gospel, the Holy Spirit speaks to our soul; by showing us more and more deeply who God is, he also shows us our deepest essence: by revealing God to us, he reveals ourselves.

Discovering God in creation …

Many artists often reflect a part of themselves in their works, whether consciously or unconsciously. Similarly, God imprinted a part of himself when he created the world. “Besides the Revelation itself, contained in the Holy Scriptures, there is a divine manifestation when the sun shines and when the night falls “[2]. Through creation, we can enter into the knowledge of God; what fascinates us when we contemplate a sea, a mountain, or a sunset reflects aspects of its nature. In contemplating creation, we can discover something about it that the Lord wants to pass on to us. “Faith therefore involves being able to recognize the invisible by discerning its traces in the visible world. A person of faith can read the great book of nature and understand its language (cf. Psalm 19, 2-5)”.

“The entire material universe is the language of God’s love, God’s boundless affection for us. Land, water, mountains, everything is God’s caress” [4]. Saint Francis of Assisi knew how to recognize this language in everything. Therefore, his Heart needed to thank God for everything that came out of his hands: for the sun, because it illuminates our day; for the moon and stars that show us beauty; for the wind and the clouds that give us sustenance…[5] As the Catechism of the Church teaches, “the various creatures that God willed in their being reflected, each in their way, a ray of God’s infinite wisdom and goodness” [6]. This contemplative spirit led the three youths to sing when God saved them from martyrdom: “Bless the Lord, sun and moon, praise him and exalt him forever. Bless the Lord, stars of heaven, praise him and exalt him forever” (Dan 3, 62-63), and after them all mountains, peaks, birds, wild animals and springs.

Simple in Heart… 

“I PRAISE YOU, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little ones” (Mt 11, 25). God wanted to reveal himself to everyone, and simplicity of Heart is the best way to know him. In the Old Testament, when the prophet Samuel was looking for a new king for Israel, the chosen one was David, the youngest of the brothers, whom his Father did not consider a possible candidate. When Jesus considered who would be the pillars of God’s new people, the Church, he chose men who were not distinguished by wisdom: almost all of them were ordinary people who earned their living by manual labor.

Sometimes, we may think the Lord chooses us because of our qualities. In addition to the biblical texts showing us the opposite – that God chooses the weak – such an approach is dangerous because it cannot sustain us when we experience our weakness. That is why St. Paul called on the Corinthian Christians to reflect on the uniqueness of their calling: “Just look at your calling, brothers, that there are not many wise according to the flesh, nor many mighty, nor many born; but the foolish things of the world God chose to shame the wise, and the weak things of the world God chose to shame the strong” (1 Cor 1, 26-27).

Jesus does not call us according to human criteria. He transcends the boundaries of appearances: he perfectly knows our shortcomings and, therefore, only asks of us the simplicity of the Heart. “Jesus understands our weakness and draws us to him as if on an inclined plane, desiring that we try to move a little higher every day” [7]. The Virgin Mary was decided as the Mother of God for her simplicity and discretion. We can turn to her to obtain a heart resembling her Heart.