Contacting God

Note: On the first anniversary of the death of the revered Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, long-time president of the University of Notre Dame du Lac, national and world figure, I thought it would be fitting to offer his thoughts on "contacting God", a goal we might especially be pursuing this Lent.

"Just this week one of our students asked me a very difficult question: “How do you know God, how do you perceive him, contact him, relate to him?” I told him that God, for me, was Christ incarnate, fully God, fully man, joining in his person God and man, the hopes, the desires, the hungers of man with the transcendence of God. And when Christ left us, he promised us the Holy Spirit to abide with us, to guide us, to give us what we find as the recurring theme of St. John’s Gospel: life and light—light to guide us and life to live divinely. Nothing less is needed to find our way out of the labyrinth of human problems today—with the light of divine guidance.

 

"I pray every day to the Holy Spirit, as my friend, to give me the light and strength to do the right thing. And the Holy Spirit has never failed to show me the way, and to give me the strength of purpose to struggle on in the face of all kinds of adversity.

"The Holy Spirit is the light and strength of my life, for which I am eternally grateful. My best daily prayer, apart from the Mass and breviary, continues to be simply, 'Come, Holy Spirit.' No better prayer, no better results: much light and much strength."  --Fr. Ted Hesburgh

 

Bro. Rene