THE SPARK WITHIN

Fr Jim Cogley

Eternal wisdom is the presence of God in all things and the goal of life is to come to this realization. The sole purpose of all religions is to serve this universal quest. Our supreme purpose in life is not to make a fortune, nor to pursue pleasure, nor to write our name on history, but to discover this spark of the divine that is in our hearts. Then when we realize this goal, we discover simultaneously that the Divinity within ourselves is one and the same in all individuals, all creatures, and all of life. This is the awareness that changes everything. Anyone who has made this supreme discovery lives with an unbroken awareness of the presence of God in all creatures. They live the reality of unfailing compassion, fearlessness and the unshakable knowledge, based on direct, personal experience, that all the treasures and pleasures of this world together are worth nothing, if one has not found the diamond at the centre of the soul.

This is an important issue, especially today, when there is a real blurring of the edges between the different world religions. There is a certain truth in that they are all like fingers pointing to the moon while none of them are the moon. They all point humankind to God but to varying degrees. As Christians we need to be quite clear as to where Christianity is similar and yet quite unique among all the great religious traditions. All the great religions are about man’s search for God while Christianity is more about God’s search for man. At the heart of Christianity is the Incarnation, the mystery of God becoming human with the implicit message that it is by becoming authentically human that we find our way to God. While so many religions point upwards to the Divinity, Christianity points downwards and insists that it is in the place of greatest messiness that it and we can be found – so the Savior is first encountered in a stable!

In the opening lines of his letter to the Ephesians St Paul in a few succinct words sums up the core truth of the Christian message. Blessed be God the Father who HAS blessed us IN Christ with all the blessings of the heavenly places. Before the world was made, He choose us IN Christ to be holy and blameless before Him and that we might be his adopted children through Jesus Christ. Notice the word HAS; its past tense, not what we hope for one day in the future when we will be good enough. It’s as if we are starting our Christian journey from the end rather than the beginning and so it is a journey based on Faith in this God who never changes His face from a frown one day to a smile the next depending on our behavior. The second key word is IN (Christ) This recurs over and over and points essentially to our baptismal entitlement of walking through life holy and blameless, with no guilt or unworthiness. This is the Good News that while we live imperfect lives and will die imperfect deaths, we are still holy and spotless and living in unconditional love.