Four Perspectives on Encountering God

What stands out to me from this week’s readings:

The following messages:

An encounter with God is more than reading about God or learning about God. An encounter with God is tangible. It’s personal and intimate.

An encounter with God changes how the person who has the encounter sees him or herself.

This new view of himself/herself and the tangible, personal encounter with God is uncomfortable, humbling and overwhelming. These feelings because the person to retreat and to cower.

God says, in different ways, “I don’t seek personal encounters with you just to make you uncomfortable. Take heart in My presence. Stand with me in this new perception of who you are. Let Me work through and in the midst of your anxieties and weaknesses. Let me heal your wounds and work through what you’ve learned from them. When you let Me, you can do for others what I do for you.”

God says, “If you’re having trouble encountering Me right now, look for those who have encountered Me. You’ll recognize the effects of those encounters. Companions changed by them will remind you of what you’re worth to me. I’ve died with you so you can live with Me.”

What I’m saying (to the readings and beyond) this week:

I had the most visceral reaction to the epistle for this week. It’s embarrassing to admit. Initially, I felt resistant to the passage. I didn’t know how to fit it into the theme I was discerning for this week’s post. The Old Testament passage and the Gospel passage describe profound, face-to-face encounters with God. We aren’t allowed as directly into such an encounter when we read the psalm excerpt. However, it seems to be the words of someone who has had a personal encounter with God. The narrator has experienced God’s providence.

Now St. Paul, the author of the letters to the Corinthians, has had this kind of encounter. But that blinding light through which Christ speaks is not what I read about in this week’s epistle. This passage isn’t where I can read about the details of that encounter. Instead, Paul mentions large number of people who encountered the risen Christ before he did. Then he points out that the risen Christ appeared to him last, “as to one born abnormally” (1 Cor. 15:8).

His assessment of himself bothered me. It’s one thing to feel humbled in the presence of God by becoming aware of the ways your choices fall short of self-giving love. But no one chooses when he or she is born. Why should characteristics a person doesn’t choose mean he or she is chosen last? I reminded myself that when the letter was written, perspectives on birth were very different. Views on disability and many other human experiences were also very different. Still, the phrase was jarring to read. What happened to “the last shall be first, and the first shall be last” (Matt. 20:16)? An answer to this question is that the verse from the Gospel of Matthew reflects a perspective gained later, from a memory recorded later. Matthew was written down after 1 Corinthians. But back to the passage from 1 Corinthians that we’re looking at this week.

The day after I first revisited the passage, I saw the note that accompanies 1 Corinthians 15:9. If I understand this note correctly, it says verses 8 and 9 reflect the attacks his opponents leveled at him. The note reminds me of an important question to ask when reading Scripture: how might the experiences of the human writer affect how the message is expressed? How might God work through the wounds revealed in the expression of the message?

Paul says he was chosen to be an apostle not thanks to his own merit but thanks to God’s grace. This message at the end of the passage means it actually does fit in with the theme I had discerned for the February 9 readings.

Nevertheless, in other ways it still doesn’t seem to fit as well as the other passages do. As I wrote above, the passage doesn’t include much of a recap of what Paul experienced on the road to Damascus. Instead, Paul says indirectly that happened. He says that because it happened, he came to believe and to preach what the other apostles had experienced with regard to Jesus’s resurrection. He seems to want the letter’s readers to persevere in faith based on his words and the words of the apostles. He seems to suggest that a personal encounter with God isn’t essential to a faith that perseveres in difficult times.

Or does he? He writes, “I am reminding you… of the gospel I preached to you, which you indeed received and in which you also stand” [emphasis mine] (1 Cor. 15:1). I usually associate receiving with something concrete coming into my possession. I don’t usually associate it with merely hearing. “Receiving” suggests something sinking in, settling. To me, receiving implies more than intellectual acceptance. Furthermore, it’s hard to imagine “stand[ing] in” something merely heard from someone else, even if that something heard comes from people who say they actually saw it. Maybe he’s suggesting that the experiences he’s had and the ones that have been shared with him open the door for the Corinthians to have their own personal encounters with God’s grace.

What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:

Leah Sealey reflects on the readings for February 9, 2025. As she does so, she suggests ways to make encounters with Scripture personal encounters with God. Some of the approaches I’d heard of. Others I hadn’t, such as asking what a passage doesn’t say and imagining myself saying it to Jesus. Usually, I read the reflections from Catholic Women Preach after I’ve written the first section of that week’s post. But I wish I’d read Ms. Sealey’s reflection before I wrote my own this week.

This week’s prayer:

Lord, open the doors of my heart and soul to encounters with You. May I recognize encounters with others as encounters with You, and may others do the same when they meet me. Grant us the grace to experience encounters with You and with others as occasions to experience clarity and compassion. Amen.

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