1 week Ago By Roxane B. Salonen
Recently, I talked for nearly two hours with a man who’d brought a loved one to the Red River Women’s Clinic in Moorhead for an abortion. Not surprisingly, the conversation veered often into the topic of God. Based on an earlier discussion I’d overheard, I knew he didn’t want to hear about Jesus, so I took things in a different direction, seeking common ground.
We could agree on two major points: God created the world and all of us, and even the tiniest human has a soul. Though we parted ways not getting what we wanted — for me, a live child, and for him, my support for his decision — we didn’t leave as adversaries, either. He remains in my prayers.
I thought of him recently when Fr. Dominic Bouck of the University of Mary spoke at my parish, Sts. Anne & Joachim Church, on prayer.
Like I’d done with this man a few weeks earlier, Father steered us away from the particulars of how we live out our faith, focusing instead on broader, existential questions. Why are we here? “To know, love and serve God in this life, and be happy with him forever in the next,” he said, referencing the Catechism. It’s that simple — and that beautiful — but we often complicate matters and need help to see through the brambles.
So Father kept it simple with such truths as: “God created you because he wanted to,” and “The same God who made the sunset calls you a masterpiece.” But after the whole Garden of Eden incident, Father said, we sort of forgot about God, so he came down to earth to get our attention, dying unjustly 33 years later for the same reason. It was all for love, Fr.
Bouck said, likening God to a man asking for a woman’s hand in marriage — not by force but by wooing. On bended knee he came, and at his Crucifixion, he bowed even lower, emphasizing the seriousness of his request. So, what’s life all about? To be good so we can attain heaven? Not really, Father said.
If it were, the prodigal son wouldn’t have been given a party. He hadn’t done anything good, after all, yet his father called for the fatted calf to be killed the moment he saw him, still at a distance, on the road heading for home. We often miss the point, Fr.
Bouck gently noted, likening our lives to a video game in which we envision we’re driving a real car, but it’s only a fake steering wheel on a screen. “We can have this illusion that what we’re going through is important,” he said, but unless it leads us to God, it really isn’t. We should remember, he concluded, that God isn’t some invisible friend, but “the infinite creator of all things.
” He’s not just a sidekick on our journey to help us accomplish our goals. “He is the goal, and he’s here to help us reach that goal, which is him.”.
