God Comes to Us Disguised as Life

Paul D’Arcy wrote that “God Comes to Us Disguised as Life”. She came to understand these words through her suffering- after her husband and her one-year-old child were killed by a drunk driver in a car accident. Amid her unimaginable pain, she came to recognize God’s presence in the realities of life.

God is present in everything that we experience- in the mess, in the pain, in the suffering, in the love, in the joy and in the goodness that surrounds us.  God reveals Himself in the everyday circumstances of our lives, often in ways we do not immediately recognise. Perhaps, this is one the challenges -recognising God in the ordinary circumstances of life.

If you have seen the movie Odyssey, one of the phrases Odysseus repeatedly asks is: “Why can’t the gods talk to us in ways that we can understand?” At Hades, when he encounters someone who tells him what the gods will do, Odysseus responds by saying that he will defy the gods. He wants to do things his own way.

In many ways, we are not so different from Odysseus.

We often want God to speak clearly and directly. We want to know what He is doing, where He is leading us and why certain things are happening. We want answers. We want certainty. And when life does not unfold according to our plans, we may question God or even resist what life is asking of us.

Perhaps we have not learned how to listen. Richard Rohr, in his book Things Hidden, speaks about “thin-slicing”- the ability to sift through the situation in front of us and to discern what really matters. It is about looking beyond the surface and recognising what is essential.

Rohr also reminds us that “Jesus is the final revelation of the nature of God” –God is love. We do not have to earn God’s love. We do not have to prove ourselves worthy of His attention. We are loved because of who God is.

This brings us to the question Jesus asks in today’s Gospel:

“Who do you say I am?”

Jesus is not simply asking His disciples for a theological answer. He is asking them to recognise Him.

And perhaps He asks the same question of us today.

Who do we say Jesus is?

Do we recognise Him in our lives?

Do we recognise Him in the ordinary, in the unexpected, in the joy, in the pain, and even in the circumstances we do not understand?

Rohr says, “The journey into the mystery of God is necessarily a journey into the unfamiliar.” This journey into the unfamiliar requires us to let go of our need for certainty and control and to remain open to what God is revealing. He suggests that “breakthroughs” which are called “revelations from the Spirit”, just as Peter experienced a breakthrough in today’s Gospel, when he came to recognise who Jesus truly was, we too are invited to remain open to the Spirit’s revelations. (SR)