Jesus said to his disciples: “The Kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Mt 13:44).

God is hiding in plain sight. He is in our midst, present to all of us, a wonderful treasure just waiting to be found. God’s eternal love and grace is ever reaching out to us. Our soul hungers, yearns, and seeks for that love, whether we know it or not. It is when we seek satisfaction, filling this deepest of our desires in material pursuits alone, that we miss the mark. We sin, create idols, seeking apparent goods, that block our access to the very union we seek. God even acts in our everyday events of life, but we may limit the experience to saying that happening was just a coincidence.

The saints and the mystics are those who have found this treasure of God’s love. They have encountered the living God in the midst of everyday and given all to be immersed in his communion. They “are amplifiers of every person’s more hidden life of faith, hope, and love. Their lives help us to hear the interior whispers and see the faint flickers of divine truth and love in ourselves and others. The Christian mystics point the way to fully authentic human life by illustrating what it means to be a human being, what life means: eternal union (which begins here) with the God of love” (Egan, ix-xx).

Today, make some time to be still to hear God’s whisperings. May we open our hearts and minds to recognize his presence, the faint flickers, present in those we encounter and the experiences we have today. May we continue to seek Christ by reading and meditating on his Word. I also invite you to read the lives of the mystics and the saints who are our mentors: St Francis of Assisi, St Teresa of Avila, St John of the Cross, St Ignatius of Loyola, or St Therese of Lisieux; so many leading us to that rich encounter and experience of the loving God of Jesus Christ.

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Mass Readings for today, Wednesday, August 2, 2017:

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/080217.cfm

Egan, Harvey D. An Anthology of Christian Mysticism, Second Edition. Introduction ix-xx. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996.