A dim reflection

Knowledge of God is never quantifiable academically. It's not like, the more you study, the more you know God. Because love alone is the way to God's revelation, which occurs first and foremost in the heart.

This is the key to understand whatever contradictions may arise when we distinguish between religion and faith. Religion constitutes for us the frame of mind in which we are educated. Faith remains always a personalised journey, the interiorising of a received tradition.

In this sense, God can never be monopolised. He is never ours; but we remain always His. As St Paul today reminds us in the second reading, our knowledge of God is always partial, fragmentary, "a dim reflection in a mirror". It is different from "face to face" revelation.

Our search for God is unending. In actual fact, "we start searching for God only when we have found him" (St Augustine). So Paul's words today - "Be ambitious for the higher gifts" - sound very provoking and meaningful for people who really thirst for God and for what truly gives meaning to our lives.

There are two different standpoints recurring in the gospels where Jesus and his interlocutors are concerned. And that is why confrontation is commonplace in Jesus' way of going about things in his time. His standpoint was always different from that of those who were listening to him. Their standpoint was always rooted in knowledge, which in turn provided securities. His in love, God's infinite love for humanity, a love which knows no boundaries but which is also redeeming. This is something that still happens with us in our search for unity or in our concern for inter-religious dialogue. Where theology divides, mysticism unites. Many a time we forget that God's revelation of his love enlightens our questions more than our answers.

Today's gospel reading depicts one of the most provocative moments of Jesus' ministry. In fact Jesus' crucifixion is only the epilogue of a series of such instances, of which one case in point we find in Luke today. They "hustled him out of town" because he was being offensive to their religious pride.

Jesus was not at all concerned with political correctness with the people of his time. Love for him means also telling the truth, even if at a cost. He was no relativist or syncretist. There is a truth about God, and it needs to be proclaimed. Jesus shows in today's gospel how in Elijah's day, when a great famine raged, Elijah was sent to a foreigner. And how in Elisha's time it was Naaman, a Syrian, a foreigner, who was cured. He is rubbing it in that God's power manifests itself also outside the boundaries fixed by humans and by religious institutions.

Jesus is always like that, even today. That is the true meaning of what we read him saying: "I tell you solemnly, no prophet is ever accepted in his own country". Which means: a true prophet never has a homeland. The moment a prophet feels at home where he is, he is no longer a prophet. A prophet is always provoking. The essential element of the prophet is not the prediction of future events; the prophet is someone who tells the truth on the strength of his contact with God. That is what God promised to Jeremiah: "I will make you into a fortified city to confront all this land". And that is what happens with Jesus in the New Testament. Jesus came to reveal the contradictions in which his people lived. A people proud of being the depository of the old promises and at the same time a people whose very attitude was hindering the realisation of those same promises.