One of my favorite Catholic philosophers, Dr. Peter Kreeft,
wrote: “Christianity is not a system of man's search for God but a story of
God's search for man. True religion is not like a cloud of incense wafting up
from special spirits into the nostrils of a waiting God, but like a Father's
hand thrust downward to rescue the fallen. Throughout the Bible, man-made
religion fails. There is no human way up the mountain, only a divine way down.”
Think of the Tower of Babel, man’s attempt to pierce the
heavens through his own power. He fails.
Think of the Northern Kingdom, the new flashier rival religious system
fail, because it severs itself from the root. Think of Adam and Eve in the
Garden, their grasping at the forbidden fruit is probably the first example of
bad religion in human history; instead of eating what God has provided for
them, believing the devil’s lie, they grasp at another way because they think
it will make them like God.
Jesus explains this in the Gospel, how God is drawing men to
himself, feeding us himself. In
Christianity, God doesn’t expect us to discover some hidden road, he has laid
the road for us, he has become the road for us, he is the way, the truth, and
the life. And he has given us food along the road, in the Bread of Life, the
Eucharist.
We see God’s drawing souls to himself in the first reading.
In the Acts of the Apostles, God has placed that desire for life and truth in
the heart of the Ethiopian Eunuch. The eunuch is a seeker: he has a copy of the
scriptures, he’s reading through them, but does not understand them. On so, on
the road, God orchestrates a divine collision.
God’s angel sends the apostle Philip to minister to this Eunuch, to
explain the Scriptures and baptize him if the eunuch responds in faith.
Who are we in this story? Well, at one point we were all the
eunuch, searching for God. God sent an apostle to us, perhaps a parent, or a
neighbor, or a friend, or a religious sister, or a priest, to explain the
scriptures to us. Through that spiritual friend, God drew us deeper into his
divine life, thanks be to God. And of course, we are all meant to be Philip in
that story too, attentive to the quiet voices of angels, sending us out to
bring souls to Christ.
There are seekers out there, seeking for Christ, seeking for
truth, seeking for the road that leads to eternal life. And sometimes we don’t hear God’s angels
sending us to meet them because we are so focused on ourselves—building our own
towers of babel, grasping at forbidden fruit, fixated on the flashy glamours of
the modern false religions.
To be God’s instrument in the great work of the Church, we
must subjugate our egos to God, seeking His will above all, walking by the
light of His truth, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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