Our whole life should be a search for God, since we are created for Him, and without Him we cannot find peace for our hearts. The encouraging thing about this search for God is that although it is very demanding in one way, and we have to give all that we have in order to come to Him, nevertheless, the place where we find Him is not far away. Pilgrimages are a good thing. Visits to especially holy places and shrines are a good thing and may help us on our way to find God’s presence. Some people may find God’s presence if they climb a very high mountain or go and live in the center of a vast desert, but the truth is that no matter what anyone does or where he goes, if he finds God, it is in his own heart that he finds Him. God is love, and love is found only in hearts.
The way we live, the way we treat others, the fidelity with which we live up to our various vocations, the way we pray, the way we practice self-denial and so on, especially our reception of the sacraments, all contribute to our reaching the goal of finding God, of finding Him not only in heaven, but now. Yet the actual presence of the God we seek is within us, and it is in the depths of our heart that we must look for Him and try to be with Him, even while we are doing external works for Him and for those He wants us to help. . .
The whole path to God in our search has to be peaceful, despite our many distracting tasks, the puzzling decisions we have to make, and the inexplicable circumstances in which we find ourselves at times. Jesus promised us His peace, and we should not let the devil or events snatch it away from us. Surely St. Paul’s utter devotion to Christ crucified and risen was what enabled him to have the peace of God, the presence of God consciously in his heart throughout his life with its many sufferings and disappointments.
We are invited to a life in the presence of God, most especially by the fact that, in obedience to Our Lord, we celebrate Holy Mass and receive the Bread of Life, and Our Lord said that if we eat His Flesh and drink His Blood, He lives in us and we live in Him. The first step towards becoming conscious of God in your heart is a very firm and convinced act of faith that He is there. Do not start off by asking yourself if God is within you and loving you. You know He is. Whether He makes Himself felt or not is quite secondary. God can be found in the heart without any ordinary feelings of comfort or warmth . . . but often, I think, our lack of the feeling of God’s presence is due to letting our faith in that presence be much too weak and lacking in deliberate assertion.
Let us live for God. Let us seek Him in our hearts. But let us always begin by both accepting and positively asserting to ourselves what faith teaches us, what the words of Jesus say to us. . . Start off by a vigorous assertion that because you are at this moment doing what God wants you to do, therefore, He is saying in your heart, “I am here.” Let us at this moment allow our hearts to rest in God for Whom they were made.
