Suggested Emphasis
"Let us know, let us strive to know the Lord."
Salesian Perspective
“Which one, I ask you, has greater power: love, to make us look upon the beloved, or sight, to make us love the beloved? Knowledge is required for the production of love; we can never love a thing that we do not know. To the extent that the knowledge of good is increased, love also is increased, provided that there is nothing to hinder its progress. Yet is often happens that after knowledge has produced sacred love, the love does not remain within the limits of the knowledge of our intellect. It presses forward and passes far beyond such knowledge, so that in this mortal life we can have greater love than knowledge of God.” (Treatise on the Love of God, Book VI, Ch 4)
St. Francis de Sales believed that knowledge is the beginning of love: to love something - to love someone - we must have knowledge of that thing or person that is the object of our love. Not only this, but knowledge can also actually increase our love.
We hear a similar challenge from the book of the prophet Hosea: "Let us know, let us strive to know the Lord." To love God, we must first know something of God; ultimately, to know something of God is to love the divine itself.
Of course, this begs the question: how can we strive to know the Lord? The answer has many facets: by praying, reading and reflecting upon Scripture, celebrating the Sacraments, participating in the life of the Church, and listening for the promptings of the Spirit, just to name a few.
The best way to know the Lord, to strive to know the Lord is to look at the life of Jesus himself. When we hear Jesus, we hear the Father; when we see Jesus, we see the Father; when we know Jesus, we know the Father. To know Jesus is to love Jesus; to know the Father is to love the Father. The Incarnation of Jesus enables us to clearly see God in action, a God who exists for one purpose and one purpose only: love.
Imbedded in this challenge to know Jesus, to know the Spirit, to know the Father is the need to know ourselves: to strive to know our deepest selves, to know our deepest fears and hopes, to know our deepest longings and dreams. To know God is not only to know someone "out there" but also to know the God who is "in here:" in my mind and heart; in the mind and heart of others; in our relationships with one another.
Of course, we mortals can never come to know ourselves completely, to say nothing of our desire to know God completely: that experience is reserved for the next life. Still, this knowledge of God, however imperfect on this earth, is the beginning and the flowering of love of God. In the end, however, what is more important than our knowledge of God is our love for God, and our willingness to display that love of God by knowing - and loving - one another.
Rev. Michael S. Murray, OSFS, is the Executive Director of the De Sales Spirituality Center.
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