IF there is one fundamental thing that God desires for each one of us, it’s a close relationship with him. After all, we are his sons and daughters. He wants that we develop and nurture an intimate friendship with him.
God wants us to know and love him with all our heart, mind, and soul. How do we build this mutual friendship and love? There is no other way except through a discipline of prayer and study.
It’s the logic of life in any relationship. If you want to know your children and have them know you too, then you must spend a lot of time to talk and listen to them and be with them. If you want your marriage to be healthy, then you must have affectionate time together with your spouse no matter how busy you are with your children and the household choirs. If you want to know what your friend values, then you must take time to know him.
So if you long to have a personal relationship with God, with Jesus our Lord, you must take time to be with him in prayer and to know him.
It’s the message that Jesus implies in his parable in this Sunday’s Gospel. People were standing outside the door knocking and saying, “Lord, open the door for us.” He will tell you in reply, “I do not know where you are from.” And you will say, “We ate and drank in your company, and you taught in our streets.” Then he will tell you, “I do not know where you are from. Depart from me all, you evildoers.”
The Lord does not want a mere casual relationship with us–of merely “eating and drinking.” Instead, he wants an intense, loyal, and passionate friendship with us. Jesus uses the image of the bride the groom to express this kind of relationship with us, members of the Body. He is the groom, and we are his bride.
On his part, he showed this kind of friendship by becoming one like us to show us the way and the will of his father, and ultimately by dying on the cross to save us from the darkness sin and to give us eternal life.
But here on earth, as long as we live, he is offering us this kind of friendship because he knows that it’s what would give us life, joy, meaning, and purpose. St. John Eudes poetically expresses this desire in his writing:
“I ask you to consider that our Lord Jesus Christ is your true head and that you are a member of his body. He belongs to you as the head belongs to the body. All that is his is yours: breath, heart, body, soul, and all his faculties.
He belongs to you, but more than that, he longs to be in you, living and ruling in you, as the head lives rules the body. He desires that whatever is in him may live and rule in you; his breath in your breath, his heart in your heart, all the faculties of his soul in all the faculties of your soul, so that these words may be fulfilled in you: Glorify God and bear him in your body, that the life of Jesus made manifest in you.
You must, then, have one breath with him, one soul, one life, one will, one mind, one heart. And he must be your breath, heart, love, life, your all.”
So how do we establish this intimate relationship with Jesus? As I mentioned, it is through the disciple of prayer and study. So take time first thing in the morning to thank God and pray to him for guidance. Read and meditate on the Scriptures like the Readings of the Mass for the day. Contemplate the presence of Jesus and the company of Mary and the Saints in your life. Spend a Holy Hour before the Blessed Sacrament. Go to daily Mass if you can. Be with like-minded people whose earnest desire is to grow in faith, prayer, and knowledge of God.
As you discipline yourself to do these exercises, you will notice and feel in your heart an increase in faith and love for Jesus. Your life would become more serene, focused on the essentials of life, and centered on God. You will experience the joy of being in intimate friendship with Jesus, which nothing in this material world can offer.
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Fr. Rodel “Odey” Balagtas is the pastor of Incarnation Church in Glendale, California.