In his January article, Bishop Lori discusses our capacity for God and God’s plan for us. He also talks about our quest for happiness and that nothing but God can create happiness within us. St. Augustine searched for many years before he finally found the happiness we all search for in our lives. Augustine let the world block his search for happiness or overshadow his capacity to love God and feel the love of God in his life. He let the cares and activities of the world block his ability to listen to God. Sometimes we let things in our lives interfere with our capacity to experience that full presence of God in our lives or to hear him call us. In The Book of the Lord, W. J. Borer writes “Our Lord speaks to a chosen soul: ‘I speak to each soul; if there are some who do not hear Me, it is because they do not listen to Me. There must be profound silence, because my voice is soft. The soul must be freed from all engrossing thoughts.’” We need to get rid of the distractions and “noise” of the world so we can hear God and be aware of his presence.

However, it is in those times when we let the world interfere with our full realization of God’s love that God waits patiently for us. Many times as parents, we have waited for a child to return home from a date, work or just being out with friends. Many time as parents we have had misunderstandings with our children and there has been some patient, sometimes impatient, waiting for the child to “return” to us. Maybe we as children were on the other side of this experience. While our love for our child or for our parents never died during these times, we were unable to experience the full expression of that love when we were away for that relationship. It was only our return or our child’s return that enabled us to experience the fullness of that love.

The Gospel gives us the magnificent parable of the “Prodigal Son”. This parable is not only about the son realizing the errors of his ways but it is also about the father waiting for the son to return home. The father waits, watching for the son. He had to be watching because he sees him while he is still a distance from the house. He runs out to him, puts a cloak on him and a ring on his finger, and has a celebration. The father in the parable is symbolic of God and tells us that God is the same way. I could imagine that He waits patiently for us to come home, for us to experience the fullness of his presence and then runs out to meet us before we are all the way home. The Compendium explains that it is God’s plan to go in search of us despite our sinfulness. One basic truth of our Faith is that while we still sinners God sent his Son to save us. While we are still sinners he is there looking for us and welcoming us home.

Talking about our capacity for God, Bishop Lori quotes one of St. Augustine’s famous lines from his Confessions, “You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you”. We truly are made for loving God and experiencing His presence in our lives. As children, some of us learned in the Baltimore Catechism that God made us to love him and be happy with him. I don’t think we can’t be truly happy unless we experience His full presence in our lives. All of us have difficulty experiencing the fullness of God’s presence because we have difficulty giving our love completely to God. Another famous quote from St. Augustine’s Confessions, “Too late have I come to love you, O beauty so ancient and so fresh; too late have I come to you" is also very applicable for us. You see, even though we might profess to be followers of Jesus Christ, we don’t completely say yes. We let the world draw us back from God and we let the cares of the world, or work, our families, other activities and sometimes even activities such as the Knights of Columbus, interfere with that fullness of God’s presence. We as Knights of Columbus do some truly remarkable things, locally and globally. We are in many cases the presence of God for others, however, sometimes I think we get caught up in the “business” of the Knights and forget the “ministry” of the Knights. The first principle of our order is charity. If we truly experience the full capacity of God in our lives then we will emulate the life of Jesus in the exercise of this principle. We will go out to search for the lost. We will be the presence of God to others. We will, for God, run out to meet the lost and welcome them back. We will go out to look for those who suffer in their lives. In being the presence of God’s to others, we are more fully able to experience the presence of God in our lives.

God calls us every day. We need to be aware of the things in our lives the block this call in our lives. Only in identifying them will we be able to get rid ourselves of them. In eliminating them from our lives, we will live more fully in the presence of God and the more fully we live in the presence of God the more complete our happiness will be.

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