July 21, 2026 • 28 mins
In this second meditation of our series on St. Josemaria's homily, Getting to Know God, Fr. Eric Nicolai reflects on St. Josemaria's invitation to move beyond simply knowing about God to truly knowing him through prayer, recollection, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. As our relationship with God deepens, we begin to see the world, and ourselves, through his eyes.
Fr. Eric encourages us to cultivate a faithful interior life, remain attentive to God's presence throughout the day, and grow in the loving friendship that is at the heart of the Christian life.
Listen and reflect on:
- Growing in friendship with God
- The gift of prayer
- The Holy Spirit's guidance
- Living in God's presence
- Deepening the interior life
Read the full text of St. Josemaria’s homily, “Getting to Know God”, online here.
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SPEAKER_01 (00:09):
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit, Amen.
My Lord and my God, I firmlybelieve that you are here, that
you see me, that you hear me.
I adore you with profoundreverence.
I ask your pardon for my sinsand the grace to make this time
of prayer fruitful.
My Immaculate Mother SaintJoseph, my father and Lord, my
(00:34):
guardian angel intercede for me.
Let us let us now go back in ourprayer to those many years ago
in which our father, SaintJosemaria, dedicated himself to
the forming of the students ofthe Roman college, the men and
(00:56):
women who would come fromdifferent parts of the world to
Rome to be close to him, to beclose to other members of the
work, to be well formed there,so as to go back to their
regions well prepared to be ableto do opistae in their different
(01:20):
regions.
We know that our father went toRome in around 1946, and his
first task was to build or toprepare the Roman college.
There were, of course, those whowould become priests and the
(01:44):
numeraries that would end upplaying important roles in the
different regions throughout theworld.
They would learn philosophy,they would learn theology, canon
law, all the sacred sciences.
In the early years in the 40sand 50s and 60s, as I
(02:07):
understand, they went to theGregorian University, they went
to the Urbaniana, the PontificalUniversity of Rome, the
Angelicum, run by the Jesuits,and some other pontifical
(02:27):
universities, some date back tothe 17th century or earlier.
And this was all part of theirtraining.
Philosophy, theology.
But for our father, he wantedhis sons and daughters really to
become men and women of prayer.
(02:52):
Yes, he wanted them to knowtheology and so forth, but he
especially gave importance toguiding them in becoming men and
women of prayer.
Men and women of deep prayer,not just to know what prayer is,
especially so that they couldhave truly confident
(03:16):
conversations with God theirFather.
This was going to be essential.
Well, how does one do this?
How do you teach a person?
How do you guide a person to beable to have confident
conversations with our LordHimself, Creator of the
(03:38):
universe?
God our Father?
Does one give classes?
Does one require exams?
Does one say, prove to me thatyou know how to pray?
Answer these questions.
(04:00):
Do you know the right frequencyto pray with God the Father?
Are you on the right channel?
How does one do this?
He wanted his sons and daughtersnot only to know stuff, to know
theology or philosophy, to knowthe different codes in canon
(04:26):
law.
But he wanted them to experiencea loving bond, a deep cohesion,
to nurture a deep relationshipthat was real and that was
resilient in front of thechallenges of life, of work.
(04:47):
A deep, resilient bond.
Couldn't be something that couldbe subject to an evaluation like
a mark or like a like atribunal, you know.
Yeah, you get assuming comelaude in your prayer, you know.
It's obvious that we understandthat.
(05:09):
So during those years in theRoman College, and it continued
for many years after, our fatherpreached meditations himself.
And with time, others did.
And for him it meant doing hisown prayer out loud.
A meditation.
(05:30):
Well, we all we all know what ameditation is.
It's it's it's the priest doinghis own prayer out loud.
Yeah, that's it.
Don Alvro would preachmeditations, Rosis Buskis would
preach meditations, and theearly priests.
(05:56):
It's as though there was meantto be very little difference
between doing one's prayer andpreaching.
This was a very unique, a uniqueway of seeing prayer.
It was meant to be such that ifyou go to a meditation, you're
(06:17):
not you're not actually likegoing to a class to learn
something.
You're meant to be participatingin somebody's prayer.
The two seem to merge together.
So, of course, you learnedsomething, you discovered, you
even heard funny things,anecdotes, and so forth.
And it's as though our fatherhad a lot of confidence in our
(06:38):
preaching as being true prayer.
Which is why we sometimes evoke,you know, we we make like
references, Lord, you are herewith us today, here, you're with
us, you're teaching us to praysomehow.
I am praying.
(06:59):
Now, when our father did that,well, some of those meditations
were written down.
As I understand, some of themwere actually recorded with the
probably rather primitivedevices that they had back then.
They came to be recorded, theycame to be written down,
somebody put different textstogether, and it came to be
(07:20):
known as the El Libero deMeditaciones, the Book of
Meditations.
Of course, originally Spanishand later in English.
And these were volumes thatstarted as meditations, our
father's own meditations,personal times of prayer, that
(07:42):
were turned into these books.
And they were, of course, sentto the regions and they were
meant to help people.
At that time, well, it was, Iwould say, rather unusual.
People were used to hearing uhstories about the lives of
saints, uh, there were, youknow, Book of Virtues, uh
Sacramental theology sort ofmade into meditations, uh,
(08:04):
sometimes uh Ignatian retreatmeditations.
And well, later on in 1988, uhFrancis Fernandez Carvajal, who
was in Rome in the 1950s, hepublished a version that could
be made public.
Those first ones were just formembers of the work and stuff,
(08:27):
but but he kind of like startedsmall.
He wasn't sure, I don't know howhe got the idea of doing it,
whether uh the father asked himto do this or what, but Don
Alvaro would have been DonAlvaro would have asked him.
But he said, Well, okay, let'ssee.
And he started the first volumeone, Advent.
Just Advent.
He put a lot of effort intothat, you know, with all the
(08:50):
days of Advent and Christmas andthat, and published it, and it
just flew off the shelves.
I mean, this thing sold, soldout.
And before you knew it, inconversations with God, the
Spanish was hablar con Dios,became the new must-have.
(09:18):
You know, to to be inconversations with God, that was
the title.
It just found this immediatereadership, and eventually it
sold, literally, it soldmillions of copies.
Because the idea of being inconversation, hablar condiosis
(09:38):
to speak with God, inconversation.
Conversation suggests adialogue, you know.
It became this is what we want,this is what I want.
And numerous bought it,cooperators and friends, and a
lot of people bought it.
It's in all the seminaries, thepriests bought it, you know, it
came out like trickling out, youknow, one volume at the time.
(10:01):
Because we all want to have aconversation with God.
We want it because Saint Osriahad already been conversing and
dialoguing with his lovingfather.
He had been used to that foryears.
And he had been teaching othersto do it.
(10:22):
This is supposed to we could sayhe was very gifted at that.
He was he had that gift.
To be able to open risingstowards God, you know, that God
is close to us, he's right herewith us, he is in, we can
intimately open our hearts tohim right now, as we are doing
right now.
(10:43):
That was our Father's gift.
To make God so make God ourFather so accessible for normal
people.
That he would say, you know, wecan hear his heart beating right
next to ours.
He's not far away.
(11:03):
And we don't need to do anythingextraordinary, anything formal,
no apologies needed, no specialvocabulary, no prerequisites.
Not even theological knowledge,all that theological knowledge
that people were acquiring.
Yeah, that was good, of course.
Certain way you could say it wasnecessary, but it was not
(11:25):
necessary in order to pray.
Just an act of faith of a son infront of his father, a daughter
in front of her father.
Took years to produce thosevolumes, the Meditaciones, the
Book of Meditations, and as Iunderstand, they're putting out
(11:46):
new meditation editions now,more updated.
But that was a result, but alsois this what our father put
(12:06):
together in what we know asfriends of God and Christ is
passing by.
And those two are meditations,but those are direct meditations
of our father, the way hepreached them, and then
afterwards he fixed them up.
Here, for some reason they'recalled homilies.
But they're really, I mean, Idon't think they're homilies in
(12:26):
this.
We understand homilies as withinthe context of a mass.
These are meditations, these areour fathers sitting down
preaching, and uh there's afamous one I looked at
yesterday.
It's called uh getting to knowGod in Friends of God, getting
(12:47):
to know God.
In Spanish, el trato con Dios,which is not the same, it's not
the same meaning exactly.
It's like uh saying el trato conDios is like saying our dealing
with God.
When we say el trato, well, eltrato can mean many things.
(13:12):
It can mean uh a contract, eltrato, it can mean uh uh trato,
it can mean a treatment, but weknow our father here means an
acquaintance, a dealings with,to know somebody, to have this
regular contact, el trato, youknow, just dealing with
somebody.
(13:33):
We understand what he'sreferring to.
It's it refers to el trato, itmeans a personal relationship, a
familiarity, a conversation, anintimacy, you know, el trato.
If we we don't have that, it'svery hard to get to know him.
(13:54):
But our father here is speakingspecifically of prayer, which is
like a foundation for interiorlife.
Prayer.
Prayer.
But it's prayer, but it's it'sthis familiar dealing with the
Lord.
I read sections again recently.
(14:15):
You know, I hadn't read them fora while.
I came back to them.
You can and you know, you readthese um these homilies, well,
these homilies, thesemeditations, you read that one,
the one that is getting to knowGod.
And you once you can feel ourfather preaching there in front
(14:35):
of some young men in Vilatevere.
You can just like feel it.
You can see it, you couldpicture it.
Vilatevere is still underconstruction, probably dust all
over the place.
Things are both brand new butstill unfinished.
But one can feel the intimacy ofprayer of our father preaching
out loud and these young menlistening.
(14:59):
And that one, Getting to KnowGod, was preached on April 5th,
1964.
And uh it's the first Sundayafter Easter, what we would call
today Divine Mercy Sunday.
(15:19):
We're in the middle of theSecond Vatican Council, which is
on a break now, it's on it's inbetween sessions.
And uh the Mass of that dayincluded the Gospel of St.
John, about the institution ofthe Sacrament of Penance, about
(15:39):
the declaration of St.
Thomas, the Apostle, my Lord andmy God, you know, when he
doubted, and he says, I will notbelieve unless I put my my hand
into his into his side.
It's when he's the account ofwhen he hadn't been there, and
he sees the excited apostles,and he hadn't been there.
(16:03):
And the apostles tried toconvince him that the Lord had
risen and he didn't know, andall that famous account that led
to his the moniker that theysay, you know, the doubting, the
doubting apostle.
And so in this meditation here,in Friends of God, our father
(16:25):
evoked the most intimate momentwhen the Lord appears in the
upper room, and the impact ofthat now on Thomas, who
initially had not been there,who missed that earlier
closeness with Jesus.
Perhaps he felt a bit uhsidelined, maybe that's why he
(16:52):
wasn't uh satisfied with theexplanations that the others had
given him, perhaps a bit angryat himself for having missed
these important moments of theappearance of the Lord.
He wasn't expecting that at all.
Perhaps a fear in him that thiscloseness would never be given
(17:15):
to him, that he would neverexperience that closeness that
the apostles were now talkingabout.
He could see it in their eyes,the excitement.
For our Father, it was anopportunity to kind of outline,
to evoke how we should pray.
How we should pray.
(17:37):
We can picture him nowpreaching, but really doing his
own prayer out loud.
He says, This is what he says.
I'm just quoting one of theparagraphs here.
Let us take another look at themaster.
You too may find yourself nowhearing his gentle reproach to
(18:02):
Thomas.
Let me have your finger see,here are my hands.
Let me have your hand put itinto my side, cease your
doubting and believe.
(18:22):
And with the apostle, a sincerecry of contrition will rise from
your soul, my Lord and my God.
I acknowledge you once and forall as the master.
From now on, with your help, Ishall always treasure your
(18:42):
teachings, and I shall strive tofollow them loyally.
You could say that our father isstruck by that imperative
(19:04):
command of Jesus towards Thomas.
It was not a command full ofharshness or an imperative
command of a kind of like anorder, almost as though it were
a military order, but rathergentle.
Cease your doubting.
Stop thinking like that.
(19:26):
Cease thinking in a way that iscritical.
Or in any way that betrays alack of trust.
If I now take your handforcefully, you will indeed
believe the feelings and thetouch of your own hand.
(19:47):
He's saying this is like he'swhat our father's evoking here
about that command of our Lord.
And today, in as we considerSaint Thomas, you and I maybe
(20:08):
also at times express the samekind of doubt as St.
Thomas.
Maybe it is expressed in a formof worry, of stress.
Maybe you have experiencedanxiety, perhaps some form of
doubt like Thomas doubted.
(20:33):
We had uh we have all that.
Thomas had all that formationnecessary to be an apostle.
He had received, heard our Lordspeak so often.
But so now he could not go allthe way to the logical but the
eventual conclusions of all ourLord's prophecies and all our
(20:57):
Lord's words.
We too must ask ourselves whereI myself do not go all the way
in my confidence in God, where Imight be seeking compensations,
where I'm in the same state ofdoubt as Thomas, not having
(21:22):
confidence, maybe indeed notbelieving the others who have
experienced him.
And so it's in this that ourFather evokes more about our
prayer.
He says, if we go back a fewpages in the gospel, we can
relive the scene in which Jesusretires to pray, and his
disciples are nearby, probablywatching him.
(21:46):
When Jesus has finished, one ofthem boldly asks him, Lord,
teach us how to pray, as Johndid for his disciples.
And he told them, When you pray,you are to say, Father, hallowed
be thy name.
(22:07):
And our father continues.
Note the surprising thing aboutthis reply.
The disciples share their dailylives with Jesus.
And there, in the course oftheir ordinary conversations,
our Lord tells them how theyshould pray.
He reveals to them the greatsecret of God's mercy, that we
(22:28):
are children of God.
And we can talk things over withhim and spend time with him just
as trustingly as a son does withhis father.
And then in the next paragraphs,our father speaks about the
trust, the confidence we have tohave, that we don't need any
specific formulas, we don't knowwhat to say, it's okay, just go
(22:51):
and do your prayer.
But he's giving a lot ofimportance to seeing his sons
and daughters truly as beingsons and daughters confident in
God the Father.
That was so essential for him.
(23:14):
You know, the the disciplesthere asked Jesus to teach them
to pray, just as John theBaptist apostles or disciples
had taught, had been taught byJohn the Baptist.
Well, what would they havelearned from John the Baptist?
What kind of prayer was theprayer of John the Baptist?
(23:34):
Perhaps it was penitential,perhaps it was a call from
mercy, from Yahweh.
These are the kind of things St.
John the Baptist would havesaid.
He's the one who said, I'm notworthy to untie a shoelace.
It would have been a kind of aprayer of humility, of feeling
(23:57):
undignified.
John the Baptist was the son ofa priest.
Zachariah was a priest.
He would have known all thepsalms, he would have taught
them how to pray the Psalms.
The messianic Psalms.
(24:20):
But our father mentions how allthis has to happen, this is what
he often emphasized, it has tohappen in ordinary
circumstances.
And I would say that often inhis meditations he would evoke
the experience of discoveringthe truth of divine filiation.
(24:42):
Our father knew about divinefiliation, that this was like a
common thing that one wouldlearn in theology or in those
kinds of environments.
But in 1931, he had the sort ofactual experience, the
existential sense of that, well,what you might call that
(25:06):
dogmatic truth.
When he was on the tramway,we've heard about this, that he
suddenly had this deepexperience that I am your
father.
Talk to me, you are my son.
He had the experience of 1928 ofseeing the work as a kind of a
(25:28):
building, like a kind of facade.
But now 1931 he sees thefoundation, which he hadn't seen
before.
And then that the mark it leftin his life was the mark of a
man of God who had God as hisfather.
(25:48):
Well, I mean, I invite you to goback to that meditation from
April 5th, 1964, in Friends ofGod.
It's called Getting to Know God.
Because there our father evokeshis own experience.
Even if we don't know what tosay, it's okay.
(26:09):
Just go and be a daughter infront of God.
That's it.
Even if you have nothing to say.
Or sometimes our mind isspinning, you know, like the
spin cycle in the washingmachine, you know, it's like
there's the first part, which isthe too, to go, to go, you know,
it's like the but then the worstpart is the spin cycle that
(26:29):
sucks out all the all the I wasgonna say energy.
I don't know.
There's no energy in clothing,but uh everything in the
clothing gets sucked out by thatspin cycle.
You can see it in the machine isliterally thumping, you know, as
it sucks out everything.
And we can, and our worries canbe like that sometimes, like a
(26:52):
spin cycle.
Well, we can do our prayer andtell the Lord, here I am, I'm in
spin cycle mode.
We feel drained.
Or just at the level offormulas.
(27:13):
And our father wanted us toreally to speak, maybe not with
great eloquence, maybe with notgreat formulas, but as sons and
daughters.
That's what he was so sort ofbent on teaching his sons and
daughters.
I thank you, my God, for thegood resolutions, affections,
(27:34):
and inspirations you havecommunicated to me in this
meditation.
I ask your help to put them intoeffect.
My Immaculate Mother, SaintJoseph, my father and Lord, my
guardian angel, intercede forme.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit, Amen.
My Lord and my God, I firmlybelieve that you are here, that
you see me, that you hear me.
I adore you with profoundreverence.
I ask your pardon for my sinsand the grace to make this time
of prayer fruitful.
My Immaculate Mother SaintJoseph, my father and Lord, my
(00:34):
guardian angel intercede for me.
Let us let us now go back in ourprayer to those many years ago
in which our father, SaintJosemaria, dedicated himself to
the forming of the students ofthe Roman college, the men and
(00:56):
women who would come fromdifferent parts of the world to
Rome to be close to him, to beclose to other members of the
work, to be well formed there,so as to go back to their
regions well prepared to be ableto do opistae in their different
(01:20):
regions.
We know that our father went toRome in around 1946, and his
first task was to build or toprepare the Roman college.
There were, of course, those whowould become priests and the
(01:44):
numeraries that would end upplaying important roles in the
different regions throughout theworld.
They would learn philosophy,they would learn theology, canon
law, all the sacred sciences.
In the early years in the 40sand 50s and 60s, as I
(02:07):
understand, they went to theGregorian University, they went
to the Urbaniana, the PontificalUniversity of Rome, the
Angelicum, run by the Jesuits,and some other pontifical
(02:27):
universities, some date back tothe 17th century or earlier.
And this was all part of theirtraining.
Philosophy, theology.
But for our father, he wantedhis sons and daughters really to
become men and women of prayer.
(02:52):
Yes, he wanted them to knowtheology and so forth, but he
especially gave importance toguiding them in becoming men and
women of prayer.
Men and women of deep prayer,not just to know what prayer is,
especially so that they couldhave truly confident
(03:16):
conversations with God theirFather.
This was going to be essential.
Well, how does one do this?
How do you teach a person?
How do you guide a person to beable to have confident
conversations with our LordHimself, Creator of the
(03:38):
universe?
God our Father?
Does one give classes?
Does one require exams?
Does one say, prove to me thatyou know how to pray?
Answer these questions.
(04:00):
Do you know the right frequencyto pray with God the Father?
Are you on the right channel?
How does one do this?
He wanted his sons and daughtersnot only to know stuff, to know
theology or philosophy, to knowthe different codes in canon
(04:26):
law.
But he wanted them to experiencea loving bond, a deep cohesion,
to nurture a deep relationshipthat was real and that was
resilient in front of thechallenges of life, of work.
(04:47):
A deep, resilient bond.
Couldn't be something that couldbe subject to an evaluation like
a mark or like a like atribunal, you know.
Yeah, you get assuming comelaude in your prayer, you know.
It's obvious that we understandthat.
(05:09):
So during those years in theRoman College, and it continued
for many years after, our fatherpreached meditations himself.
And with time, others did.
And for him it meant doing hisown prayer out loud.
A meditation.
(05:30):
Well, we all we all know what ameditation is.
It's it's it's the priest doinghis own prayer out loud.
Yeah, that's it.
Don Alvro would preachmeditations, Rosis Buskis would
preach meditations, and theearly priests.
(05:56):
It's as though there was meantto be very little difference
between doing one's prayer andpreaching.
This was a very unique, a uniqueway of seeing prayer.
It was meant to be such that ifyou go to a meditation, you're
(06:17):
not you're not actually likegoing to a class to learn
something.
You're meant to be participatingin somebody's prayer.
The two seem to merge together.
So, of course, you learnedsomething, you discovered, you
even heard funny things,anecdotes, and so forth.
And it's as though our fatherhad a lot of confidence in our
(06:38):
preaching as being true prayer.
Which is why we sometimes evoke,you know, we we make like
references, Lord, you are herewith us today, here, you're with
us, you're teaching us to praysomehow.
I am praying.
(06:59):
Now, when our father did that,well, some of those meditations
were written down.
As I understand, some of themwere actually recorded with the
probably rather primitivedevices that they had back then.
They came to be recorded, theycame to be written down,
somebody put different textstogether, and it came to be
(07:20):
known as the El Libero deMeditaciones, the Book of
Meditations.
Of course, originally Spanishand later in English.
And these were volumes thatstarted as meditations, our
father's own meditations,personal times of prayer, that
(07:42):
were turned into these books.
And they were, of course, sentto the regions and they were
meant to help people.
At that time, well, it was, Iwould say, rather unusual.
People were used to hearing uhstories about the lives of
saints, uh, there were, youknow, Book of Virtues, uh
Sacramental theology sort ofmade into meditations, uh,
(08:04):
sometimes uh Ignatian retreatmeditations.
And well, later on in 1988, uhFrancis Fernandez Carvajal, who
was in Rome in the 1950s, hepublished a version that could
be made public.
Those first ones were just formembers of the work and stuff,
(08:27):
but but he kind of like startedsmall.
He wasn't sure, I don't know howhe got the idea of doing it,
whether uh the father asked himto do this or what, but Don
Alvaro would have been DonAlvaro would have asked him.
But he said, Well, okay, let'ssee.
And he started the first volumeone, Advent.
Just Advent.
He put a lot of effort intothat, you know, with all the
(08:50):
days of Advent and Christmas andthat, and published it, and it
just flew off the shelves.
I mean, this thing sold, soldout.
And before you knew it, inconversations with God, the
Spanish was hablar con Dios,became the new must-have.
(09:18):
You know, to to be inconversations with God, that was
the title.
It just found this immediatereadership, and eventually it
sold, literally, it soldmillions of copies.
Because the idea of being inconversation, hablar condiosis
(09:38):
to speak with God, inconversation.
Conversation suggests adialogue, you know.
It became this is what we want,this is what I want.
And numerous bought it,cooperators and friends, and a
lot of people bought it.
It's in all the seminaries, thepriests bought it, you know, it
came out like trickling out, youknow, one volume at the time.
(10:01):
Because we all want to have aconversation with God.
We want it because Saint Osriahad already been conversing and
dialoguing with his lovingfather.
He had been used to that foryears.
And he had been teaching othersto do it.
(10:22):
This is supposed to we could sayhe was very gifted at that.
He was he had that gift.
To be able to open risingstowards God, you know, that God
is close to us, he's right herewith us, he is in, we can
intimately open our hearts tohim right now, as we are doing
right now.
(10:43):
That was our Father's gift.
To make God so make God ourFather so accessible for normal
people.
That he would say, you know, wecan hear his heart beating right
next to ours.
He's not far away.
(11:03):
And we don't need to do anythingextraordinary, anything formal,
no apologies needed, no specialvocabulary, no prerequisites.
Not even theological knowledge,all that theological knowledge
that people were acquiring.
Yeah, that was good, of course.
Certain way you could say it wasnecessary, but it was not
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necessary in order to pray.
Just an act of faith of a son infront of his father, a daughter
in front of her father.
Took years to produce thosevolumes, the Meditaciones, the
Book of Meditations, and as Iunderstand, they're putting out
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new meditation editions now,more updated.
But that was a result, but alsois this what our father put
(12:06):
together in what we know asfriends of God and Christ is
passing by.
And those two are meditations,but those are direct meditations
of our father, the way hepreached them, and then
afterwards he fixed them up.
Here, for some reason they'recalled homilies.
But they're really, I mean, Idon't think they're homilies in
(12:26):
this.
We understand homilies as withinthe context of a mass.
These are meditations, these areour fathers sitting down
preaching, and uh there's afamous one I looked at
yesterday.
It's called uh getting to knowGod in Friends of God, getting
(12:47):
to know God.
In Spanish, el trato con Dios,which is not the same, it's not
the same meaning exactly.
It's like uh saying el trato conDios is like saying our dealing
with God.
When we say el trato, well, eltrato can mean many things.
(13:12):
It can mean uh a contract, eltrato, it can mean uh uh trato,
it can mean a treatment, but weknow our father here means an
acquaintance, a dealings with,to know somebody, to have this
regular contact, el trato, youknow, just dealing with
somebody.
(13:33):
We understand what he'sreferring to.
It's it refers to el trato, itmeans a personal relationship, a
familiarity, a conversation, anintimacy, you know, el trato.
If we we don't have that, it'svery hard to get to know him.
(13:54):
But our father here is speakingspecifically of prayer, which is
like a foundation for interiorlife.
Prayer.
Prayer.
But it's prayer, but it's it'sthis familiar dealing with the
Lord.
I read sections again recently.
(14:15):
You know, I hadn't read them fora while.
I came back to them.
You can and you know, you readthese um these homilies, well,
these homilies, thesemeditations, you read that one,
the one that is getting to knowGod.
And you once you can feel ourfather preaching there in front
(14:35):
of some young men in Vilatevere.
You can just like feel it.
You can see it, you couldpicture it.
Vilatevere is still underconstruction, probably dust all
over the place.
Things are both brand new butstill unfinished.
But one can feel the intimacy ofprayer of our father preaching
out loud and these young menlistening.
(14:59):
And that one, Getting to KnowGod, was preached on April 5th,
1964.
And uh it's the first Sundayafter Easter, what we would call
today Divine Mercy Sunday.
(15:19):
We're in the middle of theSecond Vatican Council, which is
on a break now, it's on it's inbetween sessions.
And uh the Mass of that dayincluded the Gospel of St.
John, about the institution ofthe Sacrament of Penance, about
(15:39):
the declaration of St.
Thomas, the Apostle, my Lord andmy God, you know, when he
doubted, and he says, I will notbelieve unless I put my my hand
into his into his side.
It's when he's the account ofwhen he hadn't been there, and
he sees the excited apostles,and he hadn't been there.
(16:03):
And the apostles tried toconvince him that the Lord had
risen and he didn't know, andall that famous account that led
to his the moniker that theysay, you know, the doubting, the
doubting apostle.
And so in this meditation here,in Friends of God, our father
(16:25):
evoked the most intimate momentwhen the Lord appears in the
upper room, and the impact ofthat now on Thomas, who
initially had not been there,who missed that earlier
closeness with Jesus.
Perhaps he felt a bit uhsidelined, maybe that's why he
(16:52):
wasn't uh satisfied with theexplanations that the others had
given him, perhaps a bit angryat himself for having missed
these important moments of theappearance of the Lord.
He wasn't expecting that at all.
Perhaps a fear in him that thiscloseness would never be given
(17:15):
to him, that he would neverexperience that closeness that
the apostles were now talkingabout.
He could see it in their eyes,the excitement.
For our Father, it was anopportunity to kind of outline,
to evoke how we should pray.
How we should pray.
(17:37):
We can picture him nowpreaching, but really doing his
own prayer out loud.
He says, This is what he says.
I'm just quoting one of theparagraphs here.
Let us take another look at themaster.
You too may find yourself nowhearing his gentle reproach to
(18:02):
Thomas.
Let me have your finger see,here are my hands.
Let me have your hand put itinto my side, cease your
doubting and believe.
(18:22):
And with the apostle, a sincerecry of contrition will rise from
your soul, my Lord and my God.
I acknowledge you once and forall as the master.
From now on, with your help, Ishall always treasure your
(18:42):
teachings, and I shall strive tofollow them loyally.
You could say that our father isstruck by that imperative
(19:04):
command of Jesus towards Thomas.
It was not a command full ofharshness or an imperative
command of a kind of like anorder, almost as though it were
a military order, but rathergentle.
Cease your doubting.
Stop thinking like that.
(19:26):
Cease thinking in a way that iscritical.
Or in any way that betrays alack of trust.
If I now take your handforcefully, you will indeed
believe the feelings and thetouch of your own hand.
(19:47):
He's saying this is like he'swhat our father's evoking here
about that command of our Lord.
And today, in as we considerSaint Thomas, you and I maybe
(20:08):
also at times express the samekind of doubt as St.
Thomas.
Maybe it is expressed in a formof worry, of stress.
Maybe you have experiencedanxiety, perhaps some form of
doubt like Thomas doubted.
(20:33):
We had uh we have all that.
Thomas had all that formationnecessary to be an apostle.
He had received, heard our Lordspeak so often.
But so now he could not go allthe way to the logical but the
eventual conclusions of all ourLord's prophecies and all our
(20:57):
Lord's words.
We too must ask ourselves whereI myself do not go all the way
in my confidence in God, where Imight be seeking compensations,
where I'm in the same state ofdoubt as Thomas, not having
(21:22):
confidence, maybe indeed notbelieving the others who have
experienced him.
And so it's in this that ourFather evokes more about our
prayer.
He says, if we go back a fewpages in the gospel, we can
relive the scene in which Jesusretires to pray, and his
disciples are nearby, probablywatching him.
(21:46):
When Jesus has finished, one ofthem boldly asks him, Lord,
teach us how to pray, as Johndid for his disciples.
And he told them, When you pray,you are to say, Father, hallowed
be thy name.
(22:07):
And our father continues.
Note the surprising thing aboutthis reply.
The disciples share their dailylives with Jesus.
And there, in the course oftheir ordinary conversations,
our Lord tells them how theyshould pray.
He reveals to them the greatsecret of God's mercy, that we
(22:28):
are children of God.
And we can talk things over withhim and spend time with him just
as trustingly as a son does withhis father.
And then in the next paragraphs,our father speaks about the
trust, the confidence we have tohave, that we don't need any
specific formulas, we don't knowwhat to say, it's okay, just go
(22:51):
and do your prayer.
But he's giving a lot ofimportance to seeing his sons
and daughters truly as beingsons and daughters confident in
God the Father.
That was so essential for him.
(23:14):
You know, the the disciplesthere asked Jesus to teach them
to pray, just as John theBaptist apostles or disciples
had taught, had been taught byJohn the Baptist.
Well, what would they havelearned from John the Baptist?
What kind of prayer was theprayer of John the Baptist?
(23:34):
Perhaps it was penitential,perhaps it was a call from
mercy, from Yahweh.
These are the kind of things St.
John the Baptist would havesaid.
He's the one who said, I'm notworthy to untie a shoelace.
It would have been a kind of aprayer of humility, of feeling
(23:57):
undignified.
John the Baptist was the son ofa priest.
Zachariah was a priest.
He would have known all thepsalms, he would have taught
them how to pray the Psalms.
The messianic Psalms.
(24:20):
But our father mentions how allthis has to happen, this is what
he often emphasized, it has tohappen in ordinary
circumstances.
And I would say that often inhis meditations he would evoke
the experience of discoveringthe truth of divine filiation.
(24:42):
Our father knew about divinefiliation, that this was like a
common thing that one wouldlearn in theology or in those
kinds of environments.
But in 1931, he had the sort ofactual experience, the
existential sense of that, well,what you might call that
(25:06):
dogmatic truth.
When he was on the tramway,we've heard about this, that he
suddenly had this deepexperience that I am your
father.
Talk to me, you are my son.
He had the experience of 1928 ofseeing the work as a kind of a
(25:28):
building, like a kind of facade.
But now 1931 he sees thefoundation, which he hadn't seen
before.
And then that the mark it leftin his life was the mark of a
man of God who had God as hisfather.
(25:48):
Well, I mean, I invite you to goback to that meditation from
April 5th, 1964, in Friends ofGod.
It's called Getting to Know God.
Because there our father evokeshis own experience.
Even if we don't know what tosay, it's okay.
(26:09):
Just go and be a daughter infront of God.
That's it.
Even if you have nothing to say.
Or sometimes our mind isspinning, you know, like the
spin cycle in the washingmachine, you know, it's like
there's the first part, which isthe too, to go, to go, you know,
it's like the but then the worstpart is the spin cycle that
(26:29):
sucks out all the all the I wasgonna say energy.
I don't know.
There's no energy in clothing,but uh everything in the
clothing gets sucked out by thatspin cycle.
You can see it in the machine isliterally thumping, you know, as
it sucks out everything.
And we can, and our worries canbe like that sometimes, like a
(26:52):
spin cycle.
Well, we can do our prayer andtell the Lord, here I am, I'm in
spin cycle mode.
We feel drained.
Or just at the level offormulas.
(27:13):
And our father wanted us toreally to speak, maybe not with
great eloquence, maybe with notgreat formulas, but as sons and
daughters.
That's what he was so sort ofbent on teaching his sons and
daughters.
I thank you, my God, for thegood resolutions, affections,
(27:34):
and inspirations you havecommunicated to me in this
meditation.
I ask your help to put them intoeffect.
My Immaculate Mother, SaintJoseph, my father and Lord, my
guardian angel, intercede forme.
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