Isaiah once said that God's thoughts were not our thoughts. How true he was!
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9).
Truly, it is not easy to know the thoughts of God. For example, why did Jesus return to heaven? Why didn't he stay with us? Then, life would be much easier for all Christians. There would not be so many disputes and so much bloodshed. There would be wars no more and all the people would believe in one religion, fulfilling his wish at the Last Supper.
And I have other sheep, that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one shepherd (John 10:16).
Paul even claimed that God wanted all men to be saved.
who (God) desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4).
Yet, Jesus was not going to do this himself. Instead, he left us behind, telling us to preach the gospel to the whole creation.
And he said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation (Mark 16:15).
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9).
Truly, it is not easy to know the thoughts of God. For example, why did Jesus return to heaven? Why didn't he stay with us? Then, life would be much easier for all Christians. There would not be so many disputes and so much bloodshed. There would be wars no more and all the people would believe in one religion, fulfilling his wish at the Last Supper.
And I have other sheep, that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one shepherd (John 10:16).
Paul even claimed that God wanted all men to be saved.
who (God) desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4).
Yet, Jesus was not going to do this himself. Instead, he left us behind, telling us to preach the gospel to the whole creation.
And he said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation (Mark 16:15).
In our younger days, we were told that there was heaven and hell. Good men went to heaven and the bad guys hell. This is a welcoming piece of truth because it satisfies our sense of justice. What is more, we can imagine God sending those we hate to hell. We surely enjoy thinking up all sorts of tortures to punish them: fire, worms, boiling oil, hooks, knives etc. Perhaps we have been too childish to think along such a line. Paul told us that God wanted all men to be saved. Which means we will be living together with those we hate in heaven. Oh, my God! You can't be more serious. What are You thinking now? Your thoughts are truly not our thoughts! Paul must have made a mistake here.
This morning, I had to return to school to attend the PTA annual general meeting. I couldn't go to mass in the morning and therefore I joined the mass in the evening at 8 p.m. Fr. Patrick Sun celebrated the mass. There were not many people. He delivered his homily in his characteristic humility, no drama, no high sounding words. He simply reminded us that in baptism, we shared the threefold office of Jesus: king, priest and prophet. Christians are inborn with a mission to preach the gospel. Near the end of the homily, he read a passage from the latest papal encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth).
One aspect of the contemporary technological mindset is the tendency to consider the problems and emotions of the interior life from a purely psychological point of view, even to the point of neurological reductionism. In this way man's interiority is emptied of its meaning and gradually our awareness of the human soul's ontological depths, as probed by the saints, is lost. The question of development is closely bound up with our understanding of the human soul, insofar as we often reduce the self to the psyche and confuse the soul's health with emotional well-being. These over-simplifications stem from a profound failure to understand the spiritual life, and they obscure the fact that the development of individuals and peoples depends partly on the resolution of problems of a spiritual nature. Development must include not just material growth but also spiritual growth, since the human person is a “unity of body and soul”
(Caritas in Veritate 76).
Truly, we tend to over-simplify our thinking. When we deal with our problems, we think in terms of money and raising enough funds is equated with solving the problem at hand. We simplify our world and divide people into two groups. We sit down to wait passively for the breaking in of the Kingdom of God. No. If we continue with this habit of thinking, we will never catch up with the thoughts of God.
Dear Lord, give us enough strength so that we will not be lazy in our thoughts, inert in our actions. May our hearts glow with passion for Your Kingdom so that in the end, all of us will be saved. Amen.
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