As I mentioned in last week’s column, for years I thought of the God of the Old Testament as a vengeful God and not a God of love. In his book, “Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life (Translated by William Madges. New York: Paulist Press, pp. 288),” Cardinal Walter Kasper beautifully corrects that false image.
I especially like Cardinal Kasper’s references to God answering Moses’ question about God’s name. Much has been written about God’s response: “I am Who I Am.” The cardinal uses God’s response to underline and emphasize the love God has for the Jewish people. He writes the following:
“The revelation of God’s name thus expresses God’s absolute transcendence. On the other hand, it shows God’s personal care for his people and his commitment to be powerfully present in the history of his people. God reveals himself as the God who guides and leads in a history that can’t be tied down beforehand, a history in which he will always be present in a nondeducible, sovereign, and – yet again – unexpected way and who is again and again the ever-new future of his people. He is not a god of a particular place, but rather displays his power in every place his people encounter along the way. The universality of Yahweh, proclaimed explicitly by the prophets, is thereby firmly established from the very beginning.” (p. 47)
The portrait of God presented in the Old Testament is of a God whom the Jewish people can trust in because of His commitment to them and His love of them. He is in their present and also in their future. It seems the proper response to such a God is gratitude, trust and hope.
Cardinal Kasper’s insights into the mystery of God as presented in the Old Testament reminds me of the mistake I have made in the past of separating the two Testaments’ presentation of the mystery of God. The God Who promised to be with the Jewish people is the God about whom Jesus spoke and taught.
Infinitely Better
At this point in my life, I think of God’s promises to the Jewish people as promises eventually extended to all of us. It is impossible to exaggerate how much God loves us. Whatever the predominant image we have of God, we can always add to that image the insight “God is infinitely better than how we think of Him.”
In Sunday homilies recently, I have been stressing the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. The Spirit Who Is Love is always present to us, not just when we are in church or when we are reciting prayers. I suspect that actions which we perform without thinking explicitly of the Holy Spirit are performed because of the Spirit’s presence in our lives. I am thinking of actions such as attending a wake, visiting a hospital, being faithful to vows, performing an act of kindness toward someone, forgiving someone, thanking someone, listening to someone talk about personal problems.
I believe that all these actions – and many others – may be due to the Spirit inspiring us, encouraging us, moving us. I don’t think we have to explicitly think of the Holy Spirit when we perform actions that may be due to the Spirit’s presence in our lives. I believe that even if we don’t think of the Spirit when we are performing a good action, it does not mean that the Spirit is not involved in our actions. We are surrounded by God’s love and God’s goodness. That divine presence, I believe, often influences us without our being explicitly conscious of the influence.
Unconditional Trust
The vision of God that Cardinal Kasper presents in the dialogue between Moses and God is not an isolated view of God. A God passionately in love with His people is present throughout the Old Testament. The God of the Jewish people presented in the Old Testament is the God about whom Jesus told many parables indicating the mind-boggling love that God has for all of us. Cardinal Kasper stresses that Israel can unconditionally trust in the God Who has revealed Himself to them. We, too, can unconditionally trust in God.
I agree with St. Paul that of faith, hope and charity, the greatest is charity. As I have gotten older, however, I have come to believe hope must be very close to it. Finally, each of us is called to surrender. We don’t completely control our existence or our lives. Each of us is in the hands of God. We should trust in God when it seems that everything in our lives is going the way we want our lives to be; we should trust in God when nothing in our lives is going the way we want it to go.
God is always with us. That is more than enough!
Father Robert Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica, and author of “Pope Francis’ Spirituality and Our Story” (Resurrection Press).