Today’s readings: Deuteronomy 4, 32-34.39-40; Romans 8, 14-17; Matthew 28, 16-20

The quest of the divine has always run parallel to humanity’s quest for who we are and what we live for. This is witnessed to in all the ancient mythologies, in the most primitive world religions, in the Scriptures, and can be traced down even to our digital age shaped as it is by science and technology.

The quest about God’s nature and existence cannot be effectively approached in isolation from so many other existential questions we carry inside. In his Confessions, St Augustine’s journey toward God is not mainly to seek objective truths about who God is but rather knowledge of himself that he can have only by knowing God.

This pathway traced by Augustine provides an important key to our personal mysteries and quests. We come to a deeper knowledge of ourselves by knowing God, and knowing God throws light on our own nature. But life today can be so bustling that little or no space at all is left for us to discern the providential designs of God in what we go through.

Our salvation begins with natural and ordinary things. Our ordinary daily stories are the materials on which God’s grace works. St Paul today says we are heirs of His glory; that His glory belongs to us and that we are called to live in glory, not in fear. The mystery of the Trinity we celebrate today enhances our humanity which can be decoded the deeper we long to know God whose loving presence constantly intersects with our life.

Unfortunately, the Holy Trinity has been handed down to us as a coded puzzle left for speculative theology and inquisitive minds to decode. Yet in the Scriptures, this mystery unfolds through God’s voice constantly summoning His people, through His human face in the person of Jesus, and through His Spirit who unveils what had been hitherto hidden.

Our journey towards God takes shape in our daily life, with its hurdles, dark nights and blessings. Believing in God, as Moses indicates in today’s reading from Deuteronomy, is digging back in time to discern His footprints and to grasp with hindsight His loving presence, which many a time is not evident to the naked eye but needs to be discerned.

When Moses referred the people to their past, he knew they carried a heavy baggage of slavery and suffering in Egypt. That was the truth, but not the whole truth if seen in the light of their Exodus from Egypt. Even Augustine, again in his Confessions, had so much to tell about a past that made him wander and suffer, even stray away from the God he was seeking. But in the chaos he went through, and with hindsight, he could discern the providential designs of God.

So memory is not just remembering the past. Remembering Auschwitz, for example, can revisit a place where God seemed totally absent. Memory can be double-edged, as we can carry memories that enslave, that hurt, that generate anger and negativity. Memory can be peppered with disappointments even where God is concerned, it can distort in us His image, and instill doubt or denial of Him.

Our experience of God, as today’s gospel shows from the mixed reactions of the disciples meeting Jesus in Galilee, will alternate between moments of adoration and moments of hesitation. What is reassuring in this journey is the promise of Jesus: “Know that I am with you always, to the end of time”.

Faith always has its foundation in what memory can evoke rather than in speculative intelligence. It is through personal narratives that we can best confess our faith and become sharers in God’s own glory which makes us fully alive. God is part of the equation of our life and celebrating His mystery is a celebration of our own humanity, which is in itself a reflection of His glory.