Fr. Frank Majka, SJ – The Bridge

Important Questions Part 1

We can often think of the Bible as a book of instructions about how to live, but it is also a book of important questions we need to think about.

One such question occurs in the third chapter of Genesis, when one afternoon God comes to the Garden of Eden to walk with Adam and Eve. But they are missing, so God calls out,

here are you?”

As they come out of hiding, dressed in clothing made from leaves, they tell God they’d been hiding because they were naked and ashamed to admit they’d disobeyed God’s command not to eat the fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

We may think this happened many thousands of years ago, but the truth is that God wants to walk with us, too, and sometimes we are hiding because we are ashamed of things we have thought or said or done.

We may feel uneasy about wanting God to know everything about us, fearing that God’s reaction will be to punish us or take away his love from us.

But St. Ignatius Loyola says that when we come to pray, we should place ourselves in the presence of God — our whole selves, not just the things we are proud of, but our whole selves.

For, if we want to show God only the good side of ourselves, we will miss the experience of feeling God’s mercy and forgiveness.