Lesson from Fr. Paulus | God Wants to Let Us into His Heart

In the Catechism, we have more wisdom about God and the world than the very wisest person who lived before Christ.

Before Christ, wise and self-disciplined people learned about God from the outside - from reflecting on the beauties of creation, for example, or thinking about human experience philosophically.

This is what the great religious thinkers of antiquity did - Buddha, Zoroaster, Plato and Aristotle... They dedicated themselves to looking at God from the outside. And they learned a lot.

There is a lot of truth in what they discovered, just as there would be a lot of truth in what a police agent would discover about you or me if he put us under surveillance for a while.

But if we were to sit down with that agent and honestly tell him everything he wanted to know about ourselves, he would make much more progress much more quickly.

And that's what God has done through Jesus Christ. He wasn't satisfied with being known partially and doubtfully, the only way our external human efforts could lead us to him.

He wanted to let us into his heart, to reveal himself to us, to show and tell us about his nature, essence, thoughts, and desires. He has given us the inside story about himself. This story is told in the Bible, and it is explained in the Catechism. Through our faith in Christ, the Holy Spirit enables us not just to know about God, the way we know about someone through a magazine article, but to know God, the way we know a friend.

And what is the central characteristic that we discover about God?" That he is dynamic, personal, and involved in our lives - in short, that he is a Trinity: one divine nature, and three divine Persons.

Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity Becomes a House of God

No one understood this better than Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity. She grew up in France in the late 1800's, the daughter of a successful military officer who died of a heart attack while she was still only a girl.

She was an extremely strong-willed and temperamental child. Her frequent fits of rage were almost uncontrollable, and she was known as the "little devil." This began to change after her first Communion, when she was eleven. That afternoon she met for the first time the prioress of the nearby Carmelite convent.

The nun explained that the girl's name, Elizabeth, meant "house of God," and wrote her a note that said: "Your blessed name hides a mystery, accomplished on this great day. Child, your heart is the House of God on earth, of the God of love." From then on, recognizing that God had taken up residence in her soul, she waged a holy war against her violent temper.

She didn't win overnight, but she did win, eventually, and she also discovered her vocation to become a Carmelite herself. Her mother didn't like the idea, however, and made her wait until she was twenty-one.

She won friends of all ages during these years of waiting, singing in the parish choirs, arranging parish day-care service for families that worked in the local tobacco factory, and also winning several prizes for her skill at the piano.

She died only five years after entering the convent, at the age of 26, after having suffered horribly for months from an extremely painful disease of the kidneys. But her realization that the Blessed Trinity dwelt within her enabled her to suffer with patience and even with joy.

As she wrote to her mother: "The bride belongs to the bridegroom, and mine has taken me. [Jesus] wants me to be another humanity for him in which he can still suffer for the glory of his Father, to help the needs of his Church: this thought has done me so much good." St. Elizabeth of the Trinity had discovered the intimate, loving presence of God that he so eagerly wants to reveal to all of us.

Listening to God's Voice in Nature

God wants us to get to know him, because he knows that the happiness we long for can only come from living in friendship with him.

When we experience stress, anxiety, exhaustion, and depression, it can be a sign that we have lost touch with God's Word, that we have lost sight of his goodness, that we aren't taking good care of this friendship.

Daily prayer, both as individuals and as families; reflective reading of the sacred Scriptures; regular and faith-filled reception of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist and confession: these are the most important ways to stay in touch, to continue letting God speak to our hearts and reveal himself to us.

But today's Psalm also reminds us of another way. It tells us that "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made..." In other words, all of God's creation is, in some sense, a revelation, just as the works of an artist are a window into his personality. In the wonders of nature God is whispering to our hearts, inviting us to admire his goodness and to fall in love with his beauty.

The more we listen to those whispers, and the more often we accept that invitation, the wiser we become, the more God's love penetrates our yearning hearts. St Patrick discovered the goodness and power of God when he worked for six years as a slave, tending his master's flocks on the hills and forests of Ireland. King David had a similar experience.

Simple, balanced contact with nature, through healthy recreation, a family garden, family trips to the park, and maybe even an annual family pilgrimage to a beautiful shrine...

This too can help remind our hearts that they are loved by a God whose very essence is a dynamic relationship of love, and who is also our true and perfect Father.