Alberto Hurtado, SJ - The Search for God

The Search for God
A personal reflection by Father Hurtado that he wanted published after his death.

Our time is a tragic time. This generation has known two horrible world wars and is now at the portal of a yet more tragic conflict, a conflict so cruel that even those most interested in provoking it hold back in terror at the thought of the ruin it will wreck. The literature representative of our century is apocalyptic, testimony to a world tormented even to madness.

How many in our century, if not driven mad, feel restless, confused, deeply sad and profoundly alone in a vast overpopulated world, where neither nature nor humans speak to their spirit nor give them a message of comfort! Why? Because God is absent from our century. Many definitions can be offered for our times: age of the machine, of relativism, of material comfort. It would be better to call it a society where God is absent.

The great idols of our time are money, health, pleasure and comfort: whatever gratifies humans. And if we think of God at all we make of Him a means for the service of people: we ask that He render an accounting for what happens, we judge His actions and we complain when he doesn’t satisfy our whims. God, in Himself, doesn’t appear to interest us. Contemplation is forgotten; adoration and praise are poorly understood. The criterion of efficacy, production and usefulness form the foundation of our value judgments. Gratuitous, impartial actions promising no economic profit are neither appreciated nor understood.

Even we Christians, forced to breathe this atmosphere become saturated with materialism, a practical materialism. We acknowledge God with our lips but our everyday lives are far from Him. A thousand tasks absorb us. Our everyday lives are completely pagan. There is little prayer or reflection on the truths of our faith, little time for the practice of charity or the defense of justice. Aren’t the lives of many of us a complete vacuum? Aren’t we identical to atheists in regard to the books we read, the shows we watch, the movies we go to, the judgments we make regarding divorce, annulments, birth control and business ethics? Everything that is proper for a Christian: conscience, religious faith, the spirit of sacrifice, apostolate is ignored and even despised: it seems redundant and unnecessary to us. The majority live purely materialistic lives and death is seen as the end of it. How many baptized weep before a grave like those who have no hope!

The immense bitterness of the contemporary soul, its pessimism, its loneliness… the neurosis and even madness so frequent in our times, are they not the fruit of a world that has lost God? St. Augustine said it well: “Lord, you have created us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

Happily, the human soul cannot live without God. It spontaneously looks for Him even in what appears obviously twisted and evil. The desire for God lies dormant in the hunger and thirst for justice that devours many spirits as well as in their desire for greatness and in the growing spirit of universal brotherhood. Since its very origins, even in its forerunner the Chosen People, the Catholic Church has been a living clear, determined affirmation of its belief in God. Many in the Old Testament died for their confession of faith; for his faithfulness to the message of his Father, Jesus died and after him many millions have died for their confessed belief in the Unity of the Trinity whose Son came to live among us. Since the times of Stephen and those who as living torches lighted the gardens of Nero, to those in our own day in Russia, Czechoslovakia; Yugoslavia, Japan, Spain and Mexico, all have given their lives for Him. Others have not been asked to give this supreme witness but in their daily lives they affirm it with courage: religious who leave the world to dedicate themselves to prayer, others who unite their lives to those of the workers in factories, to a profoundly contemplative life; university academics and students animated by a serious spirit of prayer; laborers like those of the JOC who number more than a million throughout the world for whom prayer is like breathing itself, with them the wise who appreciate their vocation as Christians. And there are select groups of chosen souls who search for God with all their hearts and for whom God’s will is the supreme desire of their lives.

And when they have found it, their lives rest as on an immoveable rock; their spirit rests in the divine paternity as a child in the arms of its mother (Psalm 130). When God has been found, the spirit understands that the only great thing existing is God Himself. Before Him everything fades: they are indifferent to anything outside of him. The really important and decisive decisions are those that lie with Him.

For one who has found God, we see what happens to someone who falls in love for the first time: they run, they fly, they are transported, all their doubts become superficial for peace reigns in the depths of their being. Whatever their situation, it does not seem to be of interest to them, nor are they troubled whether their prayers are answered or not. The only important fact is that God is present. God is God. In the face of this fact their hearts are silent and in peace.

In the soul of this repatriate there is suffering and joy at the same time. God is at one and the same time, their peace and their restlessness. They rest in Him but cannot remain immobile for long. They must rest while on the move; they must take refuge in their restlessness. Each day God rises before them in the guise of a call, a responsibility, as a joy promised but as yet unachieved.

He who seeks for God feels that God seeks for him, that God pursues him and he rests in God as in a vast warm sea. The search for God is only possible in this life and life itself takes all its meaning from this search. God appears always and everywhere yet you cannot lay hold of Him anywhere. We can hear him in the crashing waves and yet He is silent. He comes to meet us everywhere but we can never capture Him; but one day the search will end and there will be a definitive meeting. When we have found God, all the good things of this world will be found and possessed in Him.

The call of God that is the leading thread of a holy and healthy existence is nothing more than the music coming from the eternal hills, descending sweetly, or roaring and bellowing, melodious or sharp and cutting. The day will come when we will see that God was the song that rocked the cradle of our lives. Lord make us worthy to listen to this call and follow it faithfully.