“Found” | Reflection by Jane Esmonde

Much has been made in recent years of the religious seeker – one who, abandoning the religious traditions of their parents, follows Christ’s words of “seek, and ye shall find” and goes on their journey to find absolute truth. While this journey has, given Christianity’s pre-80s ubiquity in US culture, tended to lead away from the gospel, it also has parallels to God’s relationship with us. 

While we seek after God, trying our best to run the race that has been set before us, God also seeks after us. With the increasing secularization of America, many have had God suddenly and surprisingly burst into their lives, leading them to truth and baptism. God is the one that saves us: even our arrival into the Faith is because he that seeks us has found us, and has aided us in opening our hearts to Him.

In his text De Doctrina Christiana (on Christian Doctrine), St. Augustine of Hippo compares the soteriological journey to returning to one’s place of origin. It’s a difficult journey, one that prayer and fasting help to speed, one that those of us wedded to earthly comforts find trepidatious, and one that the noble army of martyrs have found within the space of a sword stroke or the sound of a lion’s roar.

The kingdom of heaven is at hand. We must simply let God guide us into an open gate.