The greatest happiness a person can experience, I think, is feeling close to God.  It can also be overwhelming.  Perhaps your concept of God is the one power that overcomes all other powers—or a love more powerful than either life or death.  Maybe your sense of the unknowable entity that we call God is relief from all personal pain, relational conflict, national strife, international darkness, or universal suffering.  Possibly your sense of the immense mystery that we refer to as God is a source or force by which you sense and surrender to eternal goodness so that your thoughts and feelings are oriented toward heaven or infinite love.  Or more likely, your image of God is a wise old, bearded man dwelling on a throne amidst clouds as artists have portrayed through the ages.  Whatever our mind and heart conjure up for God, we want to be close to It.

Some ecclesiastics believe that if you stay close to the church you will stay close to God.  That is certainly true for many people.  But for some, the church gets in the way of God, especially with its prohibitive rules, institutional pomp, and self-serving pronouncements.  Since my seminary days, I have periodically pondered, “What if common people have the higher sense of what is good and godly, as well as what is not, instead of those who have been consecrated to enforce godly notions?  What if they, through daily living, are more attuned to following the message of Jesus than those who study and debate theology?”  The longer I serve as a priest among common people, the more I believe that, though they may not know more about Jesus, they know Jesus more.

Some people stay close to God, the Creator, through daily engagement with creation or honoring life’s journey by acknowledging beauty in nature in their everyday journey.  They perceive their own nature grounded in earthly nature.  “Human” comes from the Latin “humus” which means earthy or grounded or being of earthly connection.  It is easy for many of us to recognize God in the beauty of mountains, snowfall, sunsets, uncluttered beaches, starry skies, and other aspects of nature.  Similarly, many Christians who are familiar with stories of Jesus seek to encounter God through interactions with other humans, like those Christ encountered, accompanied, touched, healed, and made better through outreach.  And many among us are inspired by holy men and women who imitate Jesus by saintly existences; and we seek to imitate them.  There are lots of ways to stay close to God.

During the final year of Father Bill Bauman’s earthly life, as he contended with terminal cancer, he helped with an eighth-grade retreat at Saint Thomas More School where he was pastor before me.  One of the students asked him if he was afraid to die.  He responded by saying, “I talk with God every day.  And I listen as He tries to guide me.  We have become good friends.  I can’t wait to see Him.  For this reason, I am not afraid to die.”  Bill stayed close to God.  It helped him navigate life’s daily obstacles and it helped him advance from this world to the one that awaits.  I hope that each of us can remain close to God through daily prayer (or daily nature walks, or daily encounters with the people Jesus charged us to care for, or by imitating saints, or through moments of gratitude…).  I believe that our happiness is intimately and infinitely connected to our relationship with the Lord.

I encourage you to find ways to stay close to the Lord, whatever you conceive God to be.  He/She/It is an immense mystery far beyond what any of us can comprehend.  Yet God is so intimate that we have our best friend, closest ally, and greatest advocate in that incomprehensible being.  As Father Bauman and others suggest, walk and talk with Him daily, recognize Him in the beauty that surrounds us, stay grounded, imitate good examples, and remain close to God.