Perseverance

“But as for the seed that fell on rich soil, they are the ones who, when they have heard the word, embrace it with a generous and good heart, and bear fruit through perseverance” Luke 8:15

Perseverance. If there is only one lesson I hope and pray my sons learn fully through my words and deeds as their father it is to persevere in the pursuit of a worthy goal. I fly 22,000 kms round trip to Buenos Aires every over other month to give them the greatest gift a parent is able to offer their child: their undivided attention and full presence.

On my latest trip in August, my eldest son (nearly 8 years old) asked what the difference is between God and Jesus. Children have this arresting way of snapping out of their immediate concerns to drop a major question on adults in the most innocent, matter-of-fact kind of way that is one reason why they are such a blessing to us.

I hope I performed well (ie. gave a valid and accurate answer) in replying to his question. I said that I think that there isn’t a difference between God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. I said that they are actually the one and the same God and are sometimes called in their unison the Holy Trinity. This, unsurprisingly, turned out to be pretty abstract stuff for a nearly 8 year old. I told him that even “old” people like me had a hard time grasping this idea and that some Muslim friends of mine at times follow up on this question and I do my best to give my understanding of it.

The Holy Trinity, I told my eldest son (and I think my youngest son who is 4-1/2 might have been paying attention for some of this conversation) was that God is everywhere and eternal and all powerful. Because that’s the way God is and we happen to be just where we are when we are and have little control over anything our experience of God is a bit like this: I told him to imagine being a fish at the bottom of a pond watching as a boy throws a flat rock in a way that makes it skip on the surface of the water a few times.

I asked him if he understood and he said yes but I sense we might be revisiting this conversation on my Thanksgiving trip or subsequent ones. My answer to Olivier’s pop quiz really got the wheels turning inside my head, thinking about Plato’s cave and Descartes’ “cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am) and all that abstract stuff.

On page 22 of “God and the World” by Peter Seewald, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) replied in the following way to the German journalist’s question “You once said: If a person believes only what he can see with his own eyes, then really he is blind’.”

The man who is now Pope answered: “Because in that case he is limiting his horizon in such a fashion that the essential things escape him. He cannot after all see his own understanding. Precisely those things that are of real moment are what he does not see with the mere physical eye, and to that extent he cannot properly see if he cannot see beyond his immediate sensory perceptions.”

The author of the Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, put these words in the mouth of the red fox in that famous children’s book: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.”