Adopting God’s mind

IF we do a little math, we can arrive at the clear conclusion that we are meant to adopt the mind of God. In fact, not only his mind, but also his heart and his whole life, all of which he makes available here and now, and forever, through Christ in the Holy Spirit.

This is made possible within the life of the Church which Christ established, endowing it with enough power and structure, both visible and invisible, to perpetuate his presence in the world till the end of time and to keep us as his people, as his family, nourishing and sustaining us and leading us to our ultimate perfection in him.

We are made to adopt God’s mind because we are his image and likeness. And our mind itself, the way it is, needs to adopt something, to engage in some object. It cannot be by itself alone without an object. It can grow and develop only when it has something or someone that puts it into action.

Even in its most idle and empty mode, it still needs to adopt something. If not adopting something else, then it adopts its own self, which is actually a dangerous, self-poisoning condition to be in, since it is in that way that one would imprison himself in his own world, detached from the world outside.

And since God is the Creator of the universe, the very foundation of reality, then he should be the first and ultimate aim and object of all our knowing and loving, regardless of how mysterious he may be to us.

We should not be contented with engaging our mind with merely passing material and temporal things, with things that we can see and touch, nor even with highly sophisticated sciences, arts and technologies, nor even with intricate and highbrow philosophies and ideologies.

The fullness of our mind’s potentials happens when we adopt God’s mind. That’s when we would have a share of God’s wisdom, knowledge, power, love, mercy, justice, etc. That’s when we prepare ourselves for that final state of life when God would be everything to us, when he would “all in all.”

The mystery involved in this relationship can be accessed and lived if we would only have faith and trust in the truth that we are meant to have God’s mind. Obviously, to have faith and trust in this truth requires humility which Christ encouraged us to cultivate. This truth should not anymore sound strange to us.

Having faith and trust in the mystery involved in adopting God’s mind and sharing our life with his allows us to be taken up by a far superior power, the power of God himself, our creator and father, ever wise, loving and merciful, who will show us a far richer reality than what our reason and feelings, unguided by faith, would show us.

Let’s never forget that God never abandons even if we have been unfaithful and even hostile to him. He will do everything to bring us to him, but doing it always with due respect to our freedom. He does not impose himself on us.

On the part of God, everything is already provided for so that we can adopt his mind. Through Christ in the Holy Spirit, he has left us with his living word, his sacraments, his Church, and the different charisms that are meant to lead us to him, given our different situations, cultures, tastes and preferences.

It now depends on us on how we correspond to these gifts of God. Are we aware of them? Are we making use of them?

It’s good to ask ourselves if we are meditating on the word of God as found in the Bible, especially in the psalms and in the gospel, and in the Catechism that systematizes the teaching of Christ, the fullness of God’s revelation to us.

There we get glimpses of what is in the mind and heart of God in the different situations we can find ourselves in. We need to reflect these thoughts, desires and reactions of God in us.

The Letter to the Hebrews says: “The word of God is living and effectual, and more piercing than a two-edged sword, and reaching unto the division of soul and the spirit, of the joints also and the marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” (4,12)

To be sure, meditating on the word of God is not simply an intellectual exercise. It goes much further than that. It involves vital commitment. It has to involve our whole being.