LET ME KNOW YOU, LORD, THEN I SHALL KNOW MYSELF MORE
The above words are of the great doctor of the Church St. Augustine who prayed thus in his Confessions:
“Let me know you, O you who know me; then shall I know even as I am known. You are the strength of
my soul; make your way in and shape it to yourself, that it may be yours to have and to hold, free
from stain or wrinkle. I speak because this is my hope, and whenever my joy springs from that hope
it is joy well founded.”
“Give yourself, O my God, give yourself to me. Behold I love you, and if my love is too weak, grant me
to love you more strongly… I want you in my very self. All the plenty in the world which is not my
God is utter want. Amen.”
“Too late have I loved you, O Beauty, ancient yet ever new. Too late have I oved you! And behold, you were
within, but I was outside, searching for you there – plunging, deformed amid those fair forms which
you had made…You called and shouted, and burst my deafness. You gleamed and shone upon me, and chased
away my blindness. You breathed fragrant odours on me, and I held back my breath, but now I pant for
you. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and now I yearn for your peace.”
The holy season of Lent marked by serenity and sombreness calls us to lay our hearts bare before God in
REPENTANCE so that the grace of God can illumine us and restore in us the image of God lost through
sin. We will become new persons only when we encounter Christ Jesus and live in a personal
relationship of faith and love with him who is Our Saviour and Lord. It is only through REPENTANCE
that we can be saved and enter God’s Kingdom.
Jesus Christ begins his ministry with the call to repentance: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”
(Mathew 4:17) or “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in
the gospel.” (Mark 1: 15).
When we don’t want to respond to God’s grace because it costs us, we close the doors of our hearts to the
call of God by a variety of arguments, justifications and excuses, but the Lord will keep gently
knocking on our doors to want to enter into our hearts: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If
anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.”
(Revelation: 3:20).
It is fact that the Spirit of the Lord will never cease to speak to us in the depths of our consciences about
where we are and which direction we ned to take. Like the fighter pilots who have to constantly ask
themselves – ‘where am I’, ‘what am I doing here’, ‘what do I need to do next’ we have to ask ourselves
the same questions in our spiritual life too, knowing that the time before us is short and we have
to put ourselves on the right track lest we perish eternally. This also is the work of God’s grace.
The seven-fold gifts of the Holy Spirit received at Baptism and confirmed in the Sacrament of Confirmation
precisely tell us this great truth of our empowering in the Holy Spirit – the mystery of our inner
communion with the Holy Trinity:
1. The Gift of Wisdom: the gift of wisdom strengthens our faith, fortifies our hope, perfects charity and
promotes the practice of virtue in the highest degree; it enlightens the mind to discern and relish
things divine, and particularly the mystery of the Cross of Christ whereby, in comparison to dying
with Christ and rising with him, we consider everything else this world can give us as mere
“rubbish” (cf. Philippians 3:8).
2. The Gift of Understanding: through this gift the Holy Spirit helps us to understand the meaning of the
truths of our faith, to appreciate, relish them and penetrate their inner meaning and thereby to
be quickened to newness of life; our faith ceases to be sterile and inactive, on the contrary our
mode of life becomes an eloquent testimony to our faith
3. The Gift of Knowledge: this gift enables the soul to evaluate created things at their true worth, unmask
their pretence and their emptiness and recognize their true purpose, i.e., as instruments in the
service of God; through knowledge we come to know the loving care of God even in adversity and to
glorify him in every circumstance.
4. The Gift of Counsel: the gift of counsel endows the soul with supernatural prudence, enabling us to judge
promptly and rightly what must be done, especially in difficult circumstances by applying the
principles of understanding and knowledge to the innumerable concrete cases that confront us
in the course of our daily duty as parents, teachers, pastors of souls, consecrated religious,
public servants, and citizens of our motherland who follow Christ.
5. The Gift of Fortitude: strengthens the soul against natural fear, and supports us to the end in the
performance of duty in obedience to God’s will; it imparts to the will a divine impulse and
energy to undertake without hesitancy the most arduous tasks for the sake of the Gospel, to
face all kinds of dangers, to trample underfoot human respect in daily life, to witness to,
our Christian and Catholic faith without fear and be faithful to Christ even to shedding of
our blood.
6. The Gift of Piety: this gift begets in our hearts a filial affection for God as our most loving Father
and inspires us to serve and respect for His sake persons and things consecrated to Him, as well
as those who are vested with His authority – our parents, our superiors, our country and its
rulers, etc. so that the practice of our faith does not become a burdensome duty but a delightful
service.
7. The Gift of Fear of God: the gift of fear of God fills us with a sovereign respect for God, and makes
dread nothing so much as to offend Him by sin; it is a fear that arises not from fear of hell,
but from the sentiments of reverence and filial submission to our Heavenly Father; this fear
detaches us from all worldly pleasures that could separate in any way from God, hence the Bible
tells us, “the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom” ().
St. Augustine embodies in his life that personal relationship with the Triune God that should be the hallmark
of Christian discipleship sealed by the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It is an I-Thou relationship,
not a philosophizing or speculating or theorizing. St. Augustine came to this moment of grace
through an arduous path of immoral life, search for the truth and finally conversion to Christ. As
we know from tradition, his mother St. Monica played a great spiritual role in his journey of
conversion to the Catholic Christian faith by not ceasing to pray for his conversion. He tells
the story of his conversion and new life in his classical work Confessions which is considered
to be one of the greatest Christian testimonies of all time. His other work City of God reminds
us not to lose sight of the heavenly city as we endeavour to build the earthly city.
However, the conversion of St. Augustine has its precedents in the New Testament which sets the foundational
pattern for all future faith experiences of conversion to Christ through a personal encounter with
him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
The Gospels narrate to us the life-transforming encounters of people with the Lord and there was no going
back. It was new life from then on.
When the Lord called his first disciples, they “left everything and followed him” (Luke 5:11). In John’s
Gospel, Andrew runs and calls his brother Simon Peter in excitement, ”We have found the Messiah!”
(John 1:41). They all go and stay with the Lord and follow him thereafter, though the decisive
transformation would happen only with the encounter with the Risen Lord and in the outpouring of
the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The Acts of the Apostles depict that transformation of the Apostles
from being frightened and demoralised men to being Spirit-filled zealous and fearless witnesses
of the Good News to the ends of the earth.
In the episode of the Samaritan woman’s encounter with the Lord, she receives the light of God’s grace to
know herself, and in that dialogue with the Lord she is converted. She believes that he is truly
the prophet, the Messiah who is to come. Leaving her water jar at the well she runs into the town
with the Good News to all that she has found the Christ who has revealed her entire life to her. She
is not submerged in guilt but is brimming with the joy of God’s mercy in Christ which propels her to
call everyone she meets to come and encounter the Lord; and all the people who came to meet the Lord
believed in him and they could exclaim, “we know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world”
(John 4:42).
May this Lenten Season be a joyful experience of returning to God in repentance and attaining new life in Christ.