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"Relationship" with God


Gabriela

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Here's something I often wonder about: How do you have a "relationship" with someone you can't see or hear?

I've tried figuring this out by imagining how a blind and deaf person has a relationship, but that's not the same thing. They can at least feel presences, smell others, and touch them. The way a person touches you and their "aura" in a room tell you a lot about them. But when it comes to God, that kind of experience is really, really rare.

So I thought about how women feel when their husbands are deployed for a long, long time. But that's not the same either, because there's a pre-existing "normal" relationship and usually letters.

When it comes to God, we've got Scripture and the Eucharist, but I think of those as "mass communications". Sure, we can understand them personally, and sometimes God clearly "says something" personal to us through them. But that's exactly my question: How is that a "relationship"? It seems like not much to go on.

I've thought about how we know Him by His actions, both in history and in our lives. But that's pretty distant, hardly the intimate kind of thing that makes a typical "relationship".

Basically what I'm struggling with is: How can we call what we have with God a "relationship" when we do 99.9% of the talking and He just hangs out invisibly somewhere, silent pretty much all the time. If that were your husband, you'd leave him.

Do y'all know what I'm getting at? I'm just throwing this out there in the hope that some wise Phatmasser has also thought about this and will say something that will help this "click" for me.

 

Edited by Gabriela
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MarysLittleFlower

I don't know if this would help - good question though! - but here's how I see it... One point i noticed is that faith itself seems to give some sort of certainty. Like I wouldn't say that I just think that God exists. I know that He exists, though through faith.

I don't know if that makes any sense. . but even without any experience of God, faith itself provides a relationship because you are certain of speaking to someone - and not just hoping He's there. However.... I do believe we can reach a stage in mental prayer where the action of God becomes more interiorly manifest. Its mostly interiorly but more powerful than sensory. Not less. For anyone interested in this I recommend books like Ways of Mental Prayer, or the Three Ages of the Interior Life.

In case someone doesn't know if they want to read entire books on the topic ;) mental prayer seems to become more and more experiential and infused rather an acquired, though - its not something we try and force and I have no idea why it happens or doesn't. Certainly time spent in mental prayer together with generosity and openness to God seems to help, but many people still live in dark faith while being great Christians.

I think once a person reaches the illuminative way it becomes more experiential. To be honest sometimes I do see my relationship with Jesus as a woman waiting to see her husband for decades... Lol... But I guess sometimes we can feel God's presence spiritually as a consolation...  (Specifics of my own prayer life I usually only ever tell my SD so I'm trying to keep it general and based on books I read! Mental prayer is like my fun topic to research for some reason).

The problem is not that God does not talk. It is that we do not listen.

But how do we learn? :)

My opinion: mental prayer :D 

Reading St Teresa's Interior Castle and that book Ways of Mental Prayer clarified a lot for me with this :)

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The problem is not that God does not talk. It is that we do not listen.

You sound like a desert father.

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MarysLittleFlower

Just if anyone is interested in that book here it is online! After the "prayer of quiet" is where it gets really experiential. https://archive.org/details/thewaysofmentalp00lehouoft

 

By the way I'm NOT saying we should ever seek any experience, I believe we should not. But I also believe mental prayer helps to grow spiritually and any experience of God that He wants to give, helps us be better Christians too. I don't mean visions and stuff. I mean interior action and presence of God that becomes more evident with mental prayer. 

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Credo in Deum

Very interesting topic.  I want to comment but I don't know how to convey with words the experiences I've had.  If I could sum it up with one word it would be, communion.  Firstly and most importantly in the Blessed Sacrament and other Sacraments, then in Sacred Scritpure and Tradition, then by spiritual direction, and then daily by offering every action to God with the heartfelt desire to know Him more deeply and to love Him perfectly.  With this every action (except sin) can be, when united to Christ, a continuation and spiritual renewal of the communion I received at Mass.  

 

Edited by Credo in Deum
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MarysLittleFlower

I think everyone's going to have a slightly different answer though we may all agree ;)

I read somewhere that we know God by loving Him. That struck me as so deep.... And true. 

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Nihil Obstat

But how do we learn? :)

By shutting up now and again. ;)

But really, I think it comes down to spiritual stillness. We encounter God directly in the sacraments. We know this because the Church teaches it. But we are so wrapped up in ourselves that we are not really present for this encounter. So then we only know it because the Church teaches it, because we never give ourselves the chance to experience it for ourselves.

If instead we approach these encounters with grace in the sacraments as moments to die to oneself, I think that is the starting point. We let our selves recede and instead allow God to fill us. Our true individuality is only actualized in God, and only when we let our egos and associated concupiscence be wholly consumed and purified in and by God can our real selves, our precious and sanctified humanity, be revealed.

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"Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him...No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us...[H]e who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen." - 1 John 4:7-9, 12, 20.

For me the answer is contained in this Bible passage, in which the epistle-writer links love for your neighbour so powerfully and so clearly with the Incarnation itself. The key to a relationship with God lies in our relationships with each other. "No man has ever seen God." But through loving our neighbour God is made manifest.

Some of my most profound encounters with God have been during my everyday work in a psychiatric hospital, when I was rushed off my feet and had hardly any time for private prayer. The spirituality of my secular institute revolves around Nazareth, Jesus' thirty hidden years, when he lived the busy everyday life of a carpenter. When Jesus finally began to preach, his neighbours were astounded and rattled: wasn't this just some ordinary guy? God had been with them the whole time and they never saw it. It is the same with us. We are challenged to seek and love that hidden Jesus in our own humdrum lives. In the middle of one long Saturday shift, I remember sitting with an elderly lady with dementia, praying the Our Father with her as she drifted into her afternoon nap, and hearing, "When two or three are gathered in my name..." His presence was near-palpable. Most of the time I did not have any special spiritual feeling of closeness to Christ, and it hit me with a jolt that I am just like the people of Nazareth - he's there all the time, but I hardly notice anything about him. If I had deeper love for the people around me, I would notice more and more. I had volunteered to work 1:1 with that particular lady because she was a very demanding patient and the other staff were talking about her as though she were a big inconvenience, and I felt sorry - I wanted her to feel loved and respected, even though she often tired me out too. I think that choice unlocked the door and it temporarily swung open to show me whom I was really looking after. I was sick and you came to see me...

Mother Teresa used to pray that in the broken bread that is Christ's body she would learn to recognise him "in the distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor". I think this works both ways: in loving service to each other, especially the most broken, we gain a greater devotion for the Real Presence in the Eucharist and a more profound understanding for what that means in our lives. The two things nurture one another: prayer before Jesus in the tabernacle, and attentiveness to our neighbour.

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MarysLittleFlower

Nihil -I agree :) I've found my experience of Communion is proportional to how much I spend in thanksgiving and how much I just let God act. I think maybe we can just be still and ask God to come and do what He wants in us... And then trust. Trust is another thing that really opens up the heart to God!

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AccountDeleted

This is just one story - we each have our own.

I 'knew' God for years without having any experiential relationship. But I lived near a small church that had an Adoration room for anyone to go in at any time (obviousy a trusting parish but then it was a small community). I was going through a particularly bad time personally so I spent every day in the Adoration room alone with Jesus. Like Nihil said, spiritual stillness is the key to hearing God.

Then, during this same time of crisis, I was driving home from a meeting with my SD, who had just told me that I needed to develop and deep and personal relationship with Jesus. He said, 'You need to fall in love with Him.'

On the drive home, I was pondering what my SD had said but was having problems understanding what he meant (too intellectual I suppose). I pulled the car over to a spot where I could park and turned it off. I just sat there for awhile and started talking to Jesus as if He were there with me in the car. I said, 'Jesus, Father Paul says I have to have a deep personal relationship with you.He said I have to fall in love with you. But I don't know how to do that. Will you do it for me, please?'

As I sat there, I was filled with the most amazing sense of presence, as if Jesus actually were a human being, sitting in the car with me.But He wasn't just beside me, He was also descending upon me and filling me from the inside out. The feeling was so overwhelming that I started sobbing. It was the presence of sheer beauty and love. Words make it sound small. But that one moment changed my life forever. Since that time, my relationship with God has always felt personal, and defined through Jesus. I haven't always had the same experience of His presence, and sometimes I have almost felt that it was lost, but simply sitting in quiet and speaking with Him again, and then letting Him do the rest, well, I can say that the 'presence' of Jesus is a very real thing for me. He is closer to me than some 'real' people in my life.

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MarysLittleFlower

Beatitude, that's beautiful :) I am part of the Legion of Mary and we do work with the elderly among other things. There were times of realizing Christ is there and we are serving Him in the sick and the poor. I love that spirituality and what Mother Teresa wrote. I want to remember it more in my work. However for some reason all my most powerful times of God's presence have been related to Adoration and Communion. I wonder why - maybe souls are different in this way? 

What a beautiful story Nunsense! Shows also how God works through the advice of the SD :) I think the most powerful times of God's presence are when its interior... The more interior the more transformational and beautiful. I think I began to fall in love with Christ when I realized He completely understands me and felt His love for the first time.

Edited by MarysLittleFlower
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I would say it depends on how you think God communicates, impacts and influences your life in the first place. How does he relate to you, and vice versa?  Personally,  I don't see God as aloof or simply 'out there'. I see God as close to me -  like my breath, the wind and the sun -  simply present (being and doing) regardless of whether I notice or not.  I don't see God as 'other' in the sense that I don't relate to him in a subject - object narrative or as something confined by human thoughts or concepts. So I see God in nature, people, scripture, literature, art, daily miracles, suffering, sacraments, mass (virtually everything). The Benedictine tradition sort of sees the Bible as divine poetry -  I love that idea. I believe God works to bring us, using all things, towards a spirit of love and creativity -  so we can be more compassionate, forgiving, understanding, humble, grateful etc. He is at the ground of all being.

The whole writing of scriptures is rooted in various communities, trying or failing, to seek and discover that relationship with God and eachother.  It requires lots of listening and patience. I think we have these same patterns in our own individual lives. Scripture, the church and others can help us see this too.  I think I, maybe along with most people, can often try and perceive God with the mind (which is OK, most of us are rational beings) but we also need to ground ourselves in the spirit of him that calls us to life.

I would say the relationship is as complicated as we make it.  My relationship is one where, even if I get tired and fed up, I still feel the promptings that shows me God is still there and wanting to lift me up and out to better things. Study, prayer and silent time cultivates that inner conscience and diallogue. I've had those warm glow feelings, the inner hug, the tears when praying etc and I always come back, especially through prayer, to the thought of simplicity.

I try to keep the relationship as free of distractions and ideas, instead rooted in daily life. How was God working through me today? How did God talk to me today? What words, feelings and ideas come to me through prayer and meditation? How has God changed me from the inside out? Have I been open to God changing my heart? It means answering questions too - should I be doing this or why do I keep doing this?

This is all the bread and butter of what is the relationship element for me - really, i guess at the root, trying to always see the reality that God is always there for me, even if I ain't.  The human struggle, at least for me practically, is also accepting that love requires sacrifice (always) and that we, like Jesus, have to face the cross before we can be made anew in him :cool:

Language can complicate things (it, like thought or concepts, can only point to divinity afterall), but hopefully you understand what I'm getting at :)

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MarysLittleFlower

I think we all relate to God in a different way. He told Gabrielle Bossis (Church approved mystic) that if someone needs Him to be their Father, He will be... Or a Friend, or a Spouse. He relates to each soul in a unique way. :)

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