“I dare teach you two things, which is to know you and know God. “Augustine, in Soliloquies 15
Quarantine, who did you try to meet?
- Tips on how to enjoy time at home have been constant.
- Stay home: Update the series.
- Fiqueemcasa: how about reading this dusty book?Or spend more time with your family? All these options lift our spirits and.
- In themselves.
- Can be very good.
- However.
- Like Augustine.
- I dare to tell you: know yourself and God.
Know God! Now, knowing God and Christ is what eternal life is all about. Isn’t that what Jesus says in John 17:3?It is true that certain temporal and cultural barriers tend to hinder our understanding of what this means; today, with the modern mind more than with the Christian spirit, we tend to reduce ourselves to something purely intellectual, to a kind of apprehension by reasoning about who God is. Is that what Jesus is talking about, or is it just part of the answer?
To help us, we can return to two well-known texts. The first is in Genesis 4. 1, which says that “man lived with Eve, his wife”. The word for “living?” Adam met Eve, she conceived and gave birth to Erin. The word cohabit/know translates the idea of having a kind of intimate and deep knowledge, a communion reserved for a special, pactual, loving relationship. Remember that after Adam’s beautiful poetry (Genesis 2. 23), we are told that Adam and Eve were one flesh.
The second text, in Rom 8. 29, reads: “For those you met beforehand, you also predestined them in the image of his Son. “Those who were known and predestined in eternity were called and justified in time and will be glorified. at the Second Coming of Christ, but what does it mean that God knows the chosen?This means he loved them forever! The doctrine of choice can be understood as the doctrine of God’s eternal love. In this sense, therefore, Rom 8:29 echoes Jeremiah’s words: “With eternal love I have loved you; Did I attract you?(Jr 31. 3) He attracted us in time to have been loved in eternity. Again, the idea of knowledge is linked to intimate communion, in an immediate relationship with love and in the context of an alliance.
Does this also happen in the text of John 17? Yes! Read verse 22. Specifically, look at verse 26 when Jesus said, “I have made your name known to them, and I will do it again. ” What is Jesus’ purpose in making God’s name known to his own? The text continues: “So that the love with which you loved me may be in them, and I am in them. ” Now, Jesus affirms that he came into the world so that we may know the Father and that by knowing the Father we may enjoy the love that the Trinity has felt in itself since eternity. It is eternal life: knowing the Father, enjoying eternal love. This is exactly why Jesus came into the world. Isn’t that what we read in John 3:16? “Because God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life. ” What is the proof of God’s immense love for the world? Christ came, lived, and died for those who believe. And what does the work of Christ promote in us? The final victory over death and the possession of eternal life.
Therefore, not in vain the first commandment is precisely to love God with all that we have and are; to love God is to know him, to know him, to have an intimate relationship with him, to enjoy communion with him, to know him. To have our intellect, our will and our affections filled with an incessant desire to be in his presence. This is only possible because Christ died for us. Not only did Christ die for us, but he continually intercedes for us. If you look closely at verse 20, you will notice that in this specific prayer, recorded in Sacred and Sacred Scripture, Christ prays for you who believe in him today, for you who read this text and seek to learn more about God. of those who want to come to believe in Jesus through the preaching of the gospel. This prayer of Christ is also for you, it is for the whole Church of Christ throughout history, in all times, until he comes.
For all these reasons, I dare tell you: know God
What are your affections in relation to Christ?Do you like prayer, the anguish of the absence of the Word ?, do you see the impact of your faith in your whole life?Does your heart hurt to read that you need to know more about God and realize that this has not been a real goal in your life, or is your spiritual life asleep and listless?
My brother, resolve in your heart, ardently, to seek to know the Lord in this present time!By doing this, you can experience the taste of eternity today!Eternal life consists in knowing God and Christ, who was sent by him. To live Christian is to continue eternity in time resting in the certainty that our forces will not reach us; to live Christian is to savor the sweet honey of the coming glory and to aspire with confidence to the abundance of sweetness that we will experience.
Stop and pray like Augustine: “O God, you know me, let me know you, as I know you” (Confessions, 10. 1,1).
Get to know each other! It is not possible to have a proper knowledge of yourself without proper knowledge of God. Who we are is closely related to who God is. The Bible teaches us that God created us in his image and likeness (Genesis 1:26). God leads us to experience, in the present time, eternal life, which helps us to discern more accurately who we are, because God has also placed eternity in the heart of man?(Ec 3:11).
It is the knowledge of God, in this sense, that illuminates the knowledge of ourselves. In another sense, it is also true that knowledge of ourselves leads us to know God better. As we see our sin, we perceive divine mercy; seeing our smallness, we contemplate God’s greatness; As we realize our fragility, we observe how God is a fortified castle; In the experience of absence, God is the provider; In our orphanage, we have God as our father; In the search for satisfaction, meaning and meaning, we have in God, and only in Him, our fulness, our fulness; by aiming for something greater, much greater than ourselves, we enjoy God’s knowledge of eternal life!
As our culture insists on searching within the answers, deifying man, calling us autonomous, we learn from the scriptures that the right way to look at ourselves first is to look outside ourselves, the one who is greater than us, the one we created. us, for the creator and support of the universe. We must look at ourselves through the lens given to us by our redeemer.
This affects us in at least two paradoxical and complementary ways: first, we must not forget that our fundamental identity is in Christ; If we believe in him and love him, know that we are united to Christ and that nothing can separate us from him. (Romans 8. 28ss). Let’s rest! In a moment of doubt about identities, genders, feelings, etc. , we have a solid rock: we are children of God, adopted in Christ, sealed by the Spirit, God will not abandon us in the turbulent sea of our soul. do you know yourself as a child of God?
At the same time, a Christian vision of who we are in time does not neglect the reality of sin. Although we do not live in the practice of sin, we still struggle with the flesh, the world, and Satan (read Romans 7). Have you taken it seriously? This moment of isolation is conducive to the manifestation of certain sins in us: lust, gluttony, laziness, greed, anguish, murmurs. Did you take this time to meditate on the idols that live in your heart and who, in their midst?of the crisis, they showed their faces?What do you like, what’s his heart on?Who did you really trust?
The biblical vision of man elevates and humbles him, shows his creation in the image of God, his fall into sin and the impact of Christ’s redeeming love; paints a complete picture of humanity in the past, present and future. draw near to God in the joy of his love and the contrition of our sin. The more we know about God, the better we will know ourselves, in greatness and misery. The darkest corners of our souls do not have the illuminating light of the Saint. Ghost, the most sublime virtues of our being must be cultivated in the sacred land of divine love.
Stop and pray like Augustine: “Therefore, I will confess what I know of myself; and I will also confess what I don’t know, because what I know about myself, I know by your light, and what I don’t know, I will. ignore it, until my darkness becomes the midday light before your face (Confessions, 10. 5. 7)
Quarantine, who were you looking to meet? He opens his great work with the following statement: “The sum total of our wisdom, which deserves the name of true and true wisdom, includes these two parts: our knowledge of God and that of ourselves. ? (Institutes 1,1,1). Stay home and dare to learn more about God and yourself.