As we prepare ourselves to start a new Liturgical Year with Advent, I wish to share with you a reflection that, for me, follows logically my last message (Have we lost Jesus?).

Maybe there are many who lost Jesus and do not even care a about it. They are enjoying themselves so much with whatever they have that do not have any hint of the tragedy that hit them. Maybe there are others who lost Jesus but they are still holding to so many religious signs that have not yet realised the emptiness of what they are doing and the style of life they are living. However, there must be some others, like the Bishops at the last Synod, who are awaking to this awful reality of having lost Jesus, the One and Only Saviour of Humanity.

How can you become aware of having lost the precious pearl or the hidden treasure and do not start immediately a thorough search? Therefore, we must believe that there are people who are searching for Jesus. We must believe that as dawn advances and more people get awake the number of those who would be searching for Jesus would increase significantly. We have all the reason to assume that those, who are shocked at the realisation of their loss and are searching, know what they are searching for, or whom they are searching. However, we might be forgetting that losing Jesus is not the same as losing an object. Apart from being a living person, Jesus is also a divine person. Jesus cannot be held, cannot be possessed, and cannot be contained. Jesus is not an object that can be measured to know its size, weight, and volume. If yesterday, today and forever, Jesus is the same, it means that He is always new!

Today, we are witnessing to this phenomenon: the more institutionalised religion gets into crisis, the more we see people in search of the spirit, and the supernatural. Just think about the New Age. Maybe we have surpassed the phase of being negative and fearful of the New Age. It seems that now there is a widespread appreciation of the deep significance of New Age. The people who are searching for the spirit, for the truth, for the divine comprise a multitude that is far greater than we can ever imagine. They are searching. Yet they do not know what they are searching, or whom they are searching. The wonder of it is that they know that they do not know what, or who, they are searching for. They are open to any spiritual experience; wherever they find it they go; if one experience does not satisfy them, they go in search for another one. We know that they are searching Jesus, because He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. He is the only one that ultimately can satisfy all man’s desires. Until they find Him they will always experience unrest, that makes them continue their search.

The problem is for people like me, who think that I know exactly whom I am searching. The problem is for those who have had already a personal encounter with Jesus but have lost Him in due course. These fill convinced that the know very well whom they have lost and whom they are searching for. They do not realise that in their knowledge of whom they are searching lies the dangerous trap that can make them miss Him even if He were to pass in front of them!

How can I put it? Who is searching whom? What do you read in the Bible? Is it the story of man searching God? Or rather the story of God in continuous search of man? Is it the story of man seeking to enter into dialogue with God? Or rather the story of God seeking the best conditions and the best means of revealing Himself to man? If the Bible was just the story of man searching God, then there would have been no difference from any other scriptures; and Christianity would not have been unique. The very search for Jesus is in itself a sign that one does not know for whom one is searching. The human reaction to the realisation of having lost Jesus is to get up and start searching for Him. However, the moment one, who has lost Jesus, starts to wake up to the Spirit of Jesus, one gets the frightening and at the same time the most trusting experience of being absolutely at the hands of God’s Mercy. Whoever has lost Jesus, and knows whom he has lost, does not do anything, not even search for Him. He just prays Jesus, the Good Shepherd, that he may be found once more by Him! It is the most humble prayer, for he knows what Elisabeth learned through life’s experience when she exclaimed: “Why should I be honoured with a visit from the mother of my Lord?” (Luke 1:43)… in whose womb Jesus was present, and hidden!

Fr Paul Fenech