Reflections from my annual retreat

Friday, Jan. 30, 2015

At the first of the year, I undertook my annual retreat with the bishops of Region XIII. Every year we spend a week at the Redemptorist Renewal Center in Tucson, Ariz. It is a time for reflection and spiritual renewal. In addition to presentations by the retreat master, we have plenty of opportunities to visit with each other and to deepen the bonds that unite us as bishops. I also enjoy taking an afternoon walk along a creek bed, which is dry this time of year, providing me yet another chance to spend quiet time with the Lord. 

This year, our retreat master was Abbot Jerome Kodell, OSB, of the Subiaco Abbey in Arkansas. During one talk, he spoke of three great truths of Christianity. I have heard these truths all my life – they permeate the Scriptures and are the basis of many of our Catholic teachings – but when Abbot Kodell reviewed them they struck me as though for the first time.

Since then, I have returned to them often in my daily prayer. I believe this is one of the mysterious ways in which God, in his goodness, allows us to plumb the depths of these truths. We may think that we know them, but then he opens our hearts and we are struck anew by their beauty, so that new spiritual thoughts and ideas may take root.

The first of these three basic truths, revealed to us by God himself, is that he is always with us. He has told us this in no uncertain terms. We see it throughout the Old Testament, as God accompanies the Israelites through the desert to the Promised Land. He gives us the wonderful assurance: “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you.”  (Isaiah 49:15)  In the New Testament, at the end of the Gospels, Jesus promises that he will be with us until the end of time. Indeed, he became man to reveal God’s love for us, and a constant theme in his ministry is that he abides with us always.

This is a tremendous truth in a day when so many people feel abandoned, forgotten and brushed aside by family, friends and society itself. Their despair is so far from what God promises us! I pray that everyone, especially young people – particularly those who are having suicidal thoughts – will realize that God is with them and will never leave them.  With God, all things are possible and no problem is insurmountable.

We also are taught that God is a god of love. He is far from being a god who demands that his creation fear him, who cannot wait to pounce on us and punish us. Rather, ours is a god of profound love, mercy and compassion. He loves us so much that he sent us his son, Jesus, who gave his life for us. This salvific act reflects not only God’s love for us but Christ’s as well. 

Ours is a god of inexhaustible love, and yet so many people feel they are unlovable, that they are no good, that it would be impossible to befriend them. This is so untrue! God loves each and every one of his children unconditionally, completely, and without exception. That’s an incredible truth. It is so beautiful, so wonderful, so compelling that it takes a lifetime to allow this truth to sink in. We, with our human minds, want to put limits and conditions on God’s love. We think that of course he loves the saints – or anyone else, for that matter – more than us.

Nothing could be further from the truth! God loves each and every one of his children without exception. There is not one human being who has lived or is living or who will live whom God does not love completely, passionately and without condition.

The third great truth, which may be the hardest for us with our limited understanding to accept, is that God is worthy of the trust and belief that he asks of us. We must believe that he is with us always, that he will never fail to be present. We must put all of our faith in God’s love. We must trust that because of his presence and love, in the end, as Julian of Norwich said, “All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.” 

This is a tremendous leap of faith for us to take: to trust God in this life and to believe whole-heartedly that there’s more beyond this life – that God’s love and presence will be with us for all eternity.

Perhaps one reason God grants us the grace to occasionally hear these truths again as if for the first time is because we must affirm them every day. Whether we are rejoicing or inclined to give in to despair, we must trust that God is working in us, leading us to a life more fully lived.

Ours is a loving, providential god. As Jean-Pierre de Caussade, the great Jesuit spiritual writer, wrote, “Faith sees that Jesus Christ lives in everything and works through all history to the end of time, that every fraction of a second, every atom of matter, contains a fragment of his hidden life and his secret activity.”

I’m aware that you, like I, have heard these three truths innumerable times. My prayer is that by sharing them with you here, they will seize your heart and capture your imagination again as if for the first time. As T.S. Eliot wrote, “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” 

As Catholics, our starting place is God’s love. Let’s keep coming back to it again and again and know it for the first time.