OUR SPIRITUAL JOURNEY TO THE UNKNOWN GOD

WEDNESDAY, Sixth Week of Eastertide

Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke, OP

Acts 17:15,22-18:1; Ps 148:1-2,11-14; Jn 16:12-15

Our Spiritual journey to the Unknown God

Another role of the Holy Spirit mentioned by our Lord is his role as a guide or leader to the complete truth. In this role, the Holy Spirit is to continuously enlighten the mind of a Christian with the knowledge of God. He is a leader or guide in this regard because he brings the believer to Jesus Christ, who is the complete knowledge of the Father. He leads or guides not in the sense of going from one place to another but ascending one height of divine knowledge after another. The humanity of Jesus Christ is the way to this knowledge of God; Hence, Jesus informed Thomas that he is the way, the truth, and the life when he told the Lord that they do not know the way to where he was going. The Holy Spirit is the guide to a deep personal or spiritual knowledge of God through the humanity of Jesus Christ. This knowledge is necessary for our union with Jesus Christ our head. This explanation connects us to what we have mentioned earlier concerning the Holy Spirit uniting us with Jesus Christ through faith. Without faith in the divinity of Christ, it is impossible to gain this personal knowledge, for then one cannot walk on the way, which is the humanity of Jesus Christ. Paul left the Council of the Areopagus in Athens unable to help them because they failed to believe in the name of Jesus Christ but laughed at his idea of the risen Lord. 

The Athenians rightly described God as the unknown God, and Paul praised them for their knowledge of God as unknown. Though we all live, move, and exist in God, who is existence and calls things into existence by his will, we all know and describe him as unknown because we have not embarked on the way to knowledge of God. The only way to the knowledge of the unknown God is what the Gospel message brings to us and all. “I noticed, as I strolled round admiring your sacred monuments, that you had an altar inscribed: To unknown God. Well, the God whom I proclaim is in fact the one whom you already worship without knowing it.” Paul described the religious state of many of us who worship God; we worship him as the ‘unknown God.’ The Holy Spirit is sent to guide us to the knowledge of God, so that we may worship him in spirit and truth. “I still have many things to say to you but they would be too much for you now. But when the Spirit of truth comes he will lead you to the complete truth, since he will not be speaking as from himself but will say only what he has learnt.”

Jesus started all his disciples on the journey to knowledge of God by his teachings. But he could not lead them deep into the recesses of divine knowledge because the disciples were yet to be purified. His words that are spirit and life have already commenced the cleansing of their hearts and the renewal of their spirits, but the blood was yet to be poured for the ransoming of the slaves and the confirmation of his divinity in their hearts. These activities fall within the three tasks the Holy Spirit would achieve in the believers as Jesus mentioned in the gospel of yesterday. Another reason the disciples would not bear the revelation then is because each illumination corresponds to our self-emptying or inner cleansing. The knowledge of God is personal as we have mentioned above. So, to be filled with God, we must empty ourselves of self so that God becomes all in us. We have posited this yesterday as one of the reasons different trials and sufferings sometimes come to a Christian. The Holy Spirit moderates these trials to help us die to ourselves as he leads us to a deeper knowledge of God. The journey stops when we reject the purification sent by God through loss of faith in his loving providence. The journey to the knowledge of God takes everything from us and leads to a mystical union with Jesus Christ.

Let us pray: Grant us, Lord, the grace to enter wholeheartedly into the way to the complete truth through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, so that we may come to love and worship you in spirit and in truth through Jesus Christ our Lord.

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