Travelling Towards God

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, C.M.I.

Infant Jesus, make us insightful travellers in the world so as to see your manifestation everywhere.  Amen.

Today’s feast, Epiphany of the Lord, is characterized by traditional motifs like astrologers and kings, rising stars in the east. Apart from this there is another underlying theme, travelling towards God. Isaiah's vision, as shared in the first reading (Is. 60:1-6), features sons and daughters travelling home to Jerusalem. What Isaiah prophesied is presented in the gospel (Mt. 2:1-12) as fulfilled in the travellers, the foreign astrologers, from the east who made their way to Bethlehem to offer gifts to Jesus and to pay him homage.

If God manifests himself to foreign astrologers, why can’t we Christians see God? The following illustration may solve the problem. A little girl was looking through the family album and found a picture of a man sitting behind a cow. All that was visible was the man’s legs and feet. She took the picture to a photo shop and told the clerk: “This is the only picture of my grandfather that I have. So please remove the cow so I can see what he looks like”.

Something always seems to get in the way, to prevent us from having an unobstructed view of our God. Call it a cow. In the most radical sense, it is the sacred cow of science. Once upon a time, God was out in the open; we saw God everywhere: making thunder, causing flowers to grow, healing sickness – God was part of everything that happened.

But then, gradually, science began to take the place of God. It taught us that thunder is from the heat coming through the clouds, that photosynthesis grows grass, that medicine cures sickness. With each advance in science, God got crowded out of view. Today, almost every physical phenomenon is completely covered by the sacred scientific cow. We desperately want someone to remove the cow so we can see God again.

Faith tells us that God is the only reality; everything else is real only insofar as it is part of God’s reality. Everything else is a cow of some kind, blocking our view of God. Any desire in the wrong place or wrong time or wrong expression becomes shaped into a cow or a golden calf.

This feast challenges each of us what it is that we are manifesting to the world from our own experience of God.

VOCATION SEEDS “On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.” God asks us to give our lives. What treasures have been given to you to share with others in Christ’s name? If God is calling you, contact Fr. Hansoo Park 416-968-0997 Email vocations@vocations.ca or visit www.vocationstoronto.ca