Catechesis Two: By sending his Son, God quenches our thirst.

Song: Like the deer that yearns

Life issues: What are your expectations? We all expect something and sometimes waiting can lead us to despair. It seems as if the person we are waiting for never arrives. Or the day we highly anticipate does not come fast enough…time is either too slow or too fast. Sometimes we wait for or seek something that escapes us; something we never attain because we grow tired of waiting so we give up or think it is simply impossible.

In light of these realities, the temptation often is to give up and stop waiting. Another temptation is doubt and skepticism. It cannot be done and will not be done…

Temptation has two faces that, even if they seem different, are the same. In both cases, it is the same temptation that Adam and Eve experienced: to be in control, to be the protagonists, to do away with the need for God. “You will be just like gods.”

Facing our own limitations might lead to that, but, are you forgetting something?

God reaches out to us: Hope is maintained and grows not because we can do something on our own, but because the answer reaches out to us. It is an answer that does not come from us, is not limited like we are, because it shares in the infinite. It is not an answer offered by another person, who is just as radically limited as I am. It is a response capable of answering my thirst for the infinite because it comes from an Infinite source.

The answer is the expression of God’s mercy toward us. He does not abandon us to a vain quest to quench our own thirst, or to despair; rather, it initiates a history of salvation.

God answers with an ever greater mercy. God sends his Son, the answer to every hope and expectation. It is a personal answer.

If Christianity is God sending his Son, if Jesus Christ is the answer God has offered to the hopes of every person, then the “fundamental question” in life becomes finding God.

Psalm: You prepare a table for me in the sight of my foes. You anoint my head with oil and my cup overflows. Goodness and kindness follows me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord for all my days.