The Holy Experience of God

We are all familiar with this theological problem: If God is all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful, why is there is so much evil and suffering in the world? Theodicy is the attempt to reconcile these realities and thus justify God. But is a Christian theodicy possible?

When James and John in their hostility suggested a drone strike on a Samaritan village because Elijah did something like that, Jesus rebuked them for their wrong spirit. From this story we learn that you can find things in the Bible that you cannot find in the spirit of Jesus.

Jesus is creating a new humanity by breathing the breath of life upon the Church, just as God in the beginning breathed the breath of life upon a pile of dirt to create the first humanity. This breath of life is the Holy Spirit. Our part in all this is to develop a posture of openness and receptivity to God the Holy Spirit. We want to be the kind of people who welcome the Holy Spirit on a regular basis. As Christians we remain open to receive the Holy Spirit primarily for two things: transformation and empowerment.

In a world where fear, division, and isolation often feel like the norm—what if love became our home? What if, at the center of the universe, there isn’t just chaos or power… but a holy relationship?On Trinity Sunday, we explore the image of God revealed through Jesus—one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. A God who invites us out of the house of fear and into the house of love where’s a seat at the table for everyone. 

In 1971, commenting on the Charismatic Renewal, the German Catholic theologian Karl Rahner said, "The devout Christian of the future will either be a 'mystic,' one who has 'experienced' something, or he will cease to be anything at all." Christian mysticism is simply the experience of God, and the Holy Spirit is the experience of God.

The Ascension is not about the absence of Christ, but about the ascendancy of Christ. The ascension of Jesus to the right hand of God in the heavens is the ascendancy, the rise, the elevation, the promotion, the exaltation of Jesus to the position of all authority in heaven and on earth. Furthermore, the ascension of Christ does not lead to the absence of Christ, but to his cosmic presence everywhere.

The third appearance of the risen Christ to the disciples in John's Gospel is when Jesus restores Peter after his thrice denial around a charcoal fire in the courtyard of Caiaphas. The story of Jesus and seven disciples having breakfast around a charcoal fire on the shore of the sea of Galilee is one of the most tender and beautiful stories in all the Bible.

Emmaus is about seven miles from Jerusalem and a world away from what was. Once we recognize the risen Christ present in Scripture and Sacrament we have entered a new world.

"The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing: we know this in countless ways. It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by reason." –Blaise Pascal"We must take our subtle spiritual intuitions seriously and view them as the quintessence that underlies the ordinary world. The rejection of the sacred is the fundamental reason for our existential discontent." –Nick Cave

Christianity cannot fit within the empirical limitations imposed by the Enlightenment. If we reduce the Christian faith to rational explanation, practical advice, and political agendas we end up with a paper-thin, watered-down, cheap knock-off of Christianity that no longer has the capacity to astonish.