Understanding what God is likeI was born in Stockholm and have lived here all my life. I was lucky enough to grow up in a deeply Christian family. My father is Catholic, my mother Protestant, and I have three siblings. All of us were baptized in the Catholic Church as babies, and brought up in the Christian faith, in an atmosphere of great freedom.As God has always had a very important place in my family, ever since I was little He has been present in my life and also in our family conversations. He was there in the background, like a basic sense of security. I knew about God and prayed to Him as my parents had taught me, but I didn’t have a more personal, continuous relationship with Him. And so the teachings of Saint Josemaria Escriva played a decisive role in bringing me to know God better and develop a relationship of real friendship with Him. I learnt about Monsignor Escriva de Balaguer’s message from what I heard from other people and by reading The Way, which at that time was the only one of his books that had been translated into Swedish. Since then I’ve continued to get to know more and more about him, and my first impressions of his spirit have been confirmed, broadened and deepened. The first thing that struck me about the Founder of Opus Dei was his character, which was very human and very supernatural at the same time. In his teachings I found terrific warmth and affection, as well as genuine, disinterested concern for each and every soul. Saint Josemaria expressed the union of the human and divine spheres in this very graphic idea: heaven and earth seem to meet on the horizon, but where they really meet is in our hearts when we sanctify our everyday lives (Conversations, 116). This human-divine aspect attracted me strongly and awakened my desire to know more of his teachings. The more I learnt about them, the more I became convinced that I had to take my Christian life more seriously: put God into everyday things, begin to pray more regularly… and I thought I should do so with the help of the straightforward advice Saint Josemaria had given, which fitted my life as a student perfectly: living with God and for God does not demand any special circumstances or any special feats. God was waiting for me in my study, my family relationships and friendships, in my relaxation and enjoyment as well as times of difficulty and suffering. A very important truth which I learnt from the Founder of Opus Dei was a deep understanding of what God is like. In a vivid, graphic way he showed me a God who is a Father and a Friend, always very close to me, who really loves me, more than all the fathers and mothers in the world can love their children, and who wants to keep up a close, continuous relationship with me. This image of God got rid of any idea of Him as someone who gets in the way, who forbids me to do certain things. I understood that God is the only one who can fill my life – a life that comes from Him and needs to be heading towards Him – and fulfil my wildest dreams. I understood that what He wants is nothing other than my happiness. As He is my Creator, He knows just how the beings He has created work best, so that if I didn’t find out and do what God wanted of me, I would be turning my back on the means that God was offering me to make me a truly happy person. Another very characteristic feature of Saint Josemaria, which helped me a lot, is his very optimistic approach to life in general and also his optimism about our capacity to grow in friendship with and love for God, and improve in the virtues. That sort of optimism is not simple-mindedness, it’s not an escape into imagination for when reality is too harsh. His sort of optimism is based squarely on reality, the reality that we human beings are God’s much-loved children, and that this God, who only wants what is good for us, lets different kinds of difficulties arise in order to help us to grow, and so that we can find a loving union with Christ on the Cross. Like that, I learnt to overcome different difficulties in a sporting spirit, trusting in God. It helped me, for example, to stay firm in my Christian beliefs and behaviour when I was surrounded by friends, acquaintances and schoolmates who could not understand my decision to take my Christian life more seriously, and tried to pull me in the opposite direction. This kind of optimism, based on the supernatural reality of God and his providence as I’d learnt, necessarily leads to peace and joy that other people notice and value. At the end of secondary school, someone who’d been in the same class with me for the last three years, but whom I hadn’t had very much to do with, said to me: “Thank you for always being so cheerful over these three years.” The Way also led me to help other people to find God. The first point especially helped me to discover the great responsibility I had as a Christian to pass on what I’d received. This sense of responsibility has increased when several people told me I was the only young Christian they’d ever met. I’ve experienced, and still do, the great joy of trying to bring other people closer to God. I act on the conviction that meeting God is the best thing that can happen to anyone, and therefore my efforts are an immediate result of my love for my friends. Although some people may seem as if they don’t want to know, it isn’t true. Even in a country like mine, where so many people live their lives far from God, there is underneath it all a great thirst for God. This helps me to talk to my friends about God without embarrassment or too much circumspection. I’ve never hidden the fact that I’m a Christian or the implications that has for my life. Just the contrary: I’ve looked out for opportunities of telling people, both in words, and through the effort I make to live up to my faith. Although I’ve often had to swim against the current, and it hasn’t always been easy, I’ve seen that the courage in speaking about God which I learnt from Saint Josemaria has been worth while. With God’s help, I’ve been able to smooth the way for several people to be converted or to come closer to God. For example, in my class at secondary school I was the only Catholic, in fact the only practicing Christian. On the first day I introduced myself to the person sitting me, and in the course of our conversation I told him I was a Catholic. By the end of the day he’d told nearly everyone else in the class. From that day on we had many discussions about religious and moral questions. To begin with I was defending the Faith on my own, but two years later there were two of us. A friend in the class was converted and baptized. She came to the Catholic Faith through the teachings of Saint Josemaria, and something that helped her on her way was the joy that she discovered in his message. I think that his teachings can always be of great help to young people – or people who are young in spirit – on their way towards God. His message is so adaptable and applicable that it won’t go out of fashion, because it’s all about finding God in one’s own circumstances. At the same time, it has the stability that comes from offering genuine values and a serious path – serious, but certainly not sad! – to God. That is what everyone, especially young people, are looking for. http://www.josemariaescriva.info/article/understanding-what-god-is-like |