Sense, Feel, Think …

The Gospel today brings to light a very important point: to simply know about somebody is very different from actually knowing them personally. We can confirm this in relation to the modern world very easily .. all the people we know about through the media .. but we do not of course really know them. Herod was intrigued and wanted to know Jesus .. not just about him.

We can understand this desire in relation to the Aboriginal Approach to Life ….

3 brains .. one is in your gut and instinct .. the other is your heart and emotions .. and the third is your head and the logical analytical brain ..

Their importance is in that order …

We use the smallest brain to run our lives but they say this is just a filter on the way up … that our thinking in fact begins with our gut and instinct then we must check this with how it feels .. with our emotional brain .. we then use reason and analysis .. but all this means we don’t have to start everything with understanding or knowledge …

This is how Herod has to deal with Jesus .. he is not sure why he wants to meet him but in his gut and through his emotions he seeks some kind of encounter he can experience ,,

I wonder how you approach an encounter with Jesus … do we want to understand before we really establish relationship .. or do we give in to a deep gut sense that all this might be important and that emotionally we need a relationship with God??

Jesus wants each of us to know God , not just about God, through His life. So our prayer is like communication with a friend, not with an acquaintance. If you are blessed in having some close friends you then understand the difference. Recall then the words of Jesus, “I do not call you servants any longer…I have called you friends” (John 15:15). You are never alone when you return his offer of friendship.

Ignatius believed that all human beings have experiences of God’s creative and sustaining love. If we pay attention to these experiences, we will find that during them we begin to desire God with all our heart and, at the same time, feel an enormous sense of well-being.

Not that we understand God but through experience we can feel that everything and everyone pales in comparison. In truth humans want this Mystery more than we want anything or anyone else. We become—in the moment of experience at least—free of attachments to people and things, or “indifferent,” as Ignatius says; we would not want to choose anything that would take us away from the object of this desire for “we know not what,” the Mystery we call God.

Let us allow our guts to remind us we need to encounter Jesus in the Word of God. That our emotions confirm it is good and right to know God .. and then in the end we might have some understanding …

Luke 9:7-9
Now Herod the ruler heard about all that had taken place, and he was perplexed, because it was said by some that John had been raised from the dead, by some that Elijah had appeared, and by others that one of the ancient prophets had arisen. Herod said, “John I beheaded; but who is this about whom I hear such things?” And he tried to see him.