How will Jesus find me?

Homily

5th Sunday of Ordinary Time BII

4 February 2023

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

How will Jesus find me?

In the Gospel today, everyone is looking for Jesus, and for good reason.  He has the words of eternal life.  He is the fulfillment of every human heart.  He speaks a word that heals and defeats evil.  I am made for a relationship with Him who is my life.  Anyone who is searching for life, in some manner is looking for Jesus.

Yet I want to flip this on its head.  What's more important is that Jesus is looking for you.  He came to seek and to save what was lost.  He can't stand the thought of losing you.  So He searches for you, relentlessly.  He initiates.  Yet He will not force himself, for love never does that.  He invites. He begs.  He desires to make His dwelling within me.

Yet I can be elite in my defenses against Him finding me, or at least I think I can be.  Whenever I want privacy, choice or control, I hide, praying that He won't find me.  In this I break His heart, for I was created to be loved, forgiven, redeemed and found by the Lord, not to escape and hide.

How will Jesus find me?  Today's Gospel shows the way.  In order to be online with His Father, in order to go deeper into the mystery of the Father's will, in order to relate the affairs of His heart with His Father, Jesus goes to a deserted place, and prays.  It is there too that He wishes an intimate conversation with me.  In the desert that is silence, solitude and suffering, He thirsts to look at me, and to be seen by me, through faith and from the heart.

Jesus retreats from the noise, where there is much good to be done.  He doesn't settle for the status quo, but wants to explore the more that His mission entails.  So He lets go of the present, and prays.  I need this too.  Prayer is always susceptible to become transactional, superficial and repetitive.  Job describes a malaise that is familiar to many in February, a hardening of the heart, a loss of hope that God's promises can still be fulfilled.

It's in the desert, in that place of solitude, silence and suffering, that intimacy can be restored and hope reborn.  It's in the desert especially that I can relate the suffering that is beyond my understanding to the mystery of the Lord's cross.  Complaints, so long as they are not selfish or childish, are welcome as part of our prayer.  Job complains, and it's a good prayer!  Our evaluation of things based on fairness needs to be placed within the wounds of Christ, for it is at the cross that the worst thing imaginable happened to the best person, and produced the greatest fruit of the resurrection.  That's where my questions and lack of hope are meant to be related, at the cross.  It's hard to relate suffering though, and not let it get the best of us, without a sacred space of silence, solitude and suffering in my life.

He went off to a deserted place, and prayed.  What does that space look like for me?  How will Jesus find me?