Sixth Day in the Octave of Christmas
1 Jn 2: 12-17; Lk 2:36-40
What is the most valuable resource today? Data. Knowledge is the most valuable resource nowadays. Think of the internet, that incredible storehouse of knowledge available at your fingertips and which has more information about you than you even know. Think of Wikileaks and the huge shifts that it has brought into society since the data is linked with huge sums of money. Think of the competition between and within colleges for the best and the finest educational system, the laboratories, the research centres. All this knowledge looks so valuable, and yet there is a knowledge - or rather a knowing - that surpasses it all. I am referring here to knowing God. Not simply knowledge of God. We can easily ask Siri about what or who is God. Knowing God is much deeper than that.
John in his letter speaks about knowing God three times. "You know him who is from the beginning" (twice); "you know the father." This is no coincidence ([k]no[w] pun intended!). Even in the Fourth Gospel, written by the same author (or both belonging to the same Johannine community anyway), knowing is given a lot of importance. In one of his disputes with his disciples, Jesus says, "“You do not know me or my Father ... If you knew me, you would know my Father also” (Jn 8:19). Then again, "Though you do not know him, I know him. If I said I did not, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and obey his word" (8:55). Later on in the same Gospel we read that in the Last Supper, Jesus promises to send his disciples the Holy Spirit who will lead them to know Him and will help them follow his commands (Jn 14).
In Semitic culture, to know is to recognise, but also suggests sexual intimacy. Therefore here John is saying something very deep. He is saying that through the birth of Jesus, our relationship with God must be so strong that we not only do we know God and recognise God, but also that our love for God is stronger for anything else, which John classifies under "love of the world."
In the Gospel we see how this is possible thanks to Anna, this elderly widow whose life was oriented in just one direction: towards God. We can say that she really knew God because of the relationship she enjoyed with God. She might not have had any particular knowledge of God. It is not important whether she would have passed or not her theology exams were there any at the time. But she did know God and she recognised Jesus as God, enabling her also to teach others about Jesus and the salvation he brought.
This reminds me of what Pope Francis refers to as popular piety in his apostolic exhortation The Joy of the Gospel (para. 122-126). He also calls it "the people's mysticism" and that's what it is. So many people in a very simple way abandon themselves into God simply out of the desire of knowing God, of loving God over everything else and are therefore able to speak to others about God's concrete love. Sometimes they do so only by words, but always do so through their actions.
May this desire of knowing God grow in us too.
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