Hiding from God

Learning how God finds us and we find him

11/08/2021

Responsorial Psalm 139:1b-3, 4-6, 7-8, 9-10 O LORD, you have probed me and you know me; you know when I sit and when I stand; you understand my thoughts from afar. My journeys and my rest you scrutinize, with all my ways you are familiar. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know the whole of it. Behind me and before, you hem me in and rest your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from your spirit? From your presence where can I flee? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I sink to the nether world, you are present there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I settle at the farthest limits of the sea, Even there your hand shall guide me, and your right hand hold me fast.

Last Thursday at school Mass, I told the students that one of my favorite childhood games was hide-and-seek. In fact, it is still one of my favorite games as I try to hide from you, my parishioners. I asked them if they had a favorite hiding place. One answered “his closet,” another said, “under the bed,” another answered, “the front porch.” One of the funniest ways small children try to hide from others, especially adults, is by covering their eyes with their hands. They childishly think that “if I cannot see you, you cannot see me.”

Then I asked them that if they were playing hide-and-seek with God, would God be able to find them? Could he find you in your closet? I asked. They all answered resoundingly, “Yes!” Could he find you under your bed? Again, all chimed in with, “Yes!” Could he find you on your front porch?” Again, all shouted, “Yes!” Could he find you if you covered your eyes with your hands and pretended God is not there? All said, half-laughing, “Yes!”

I added, more seriously, “Please remember your answers today. Because as you get older, and become teenagers and twenty-somethings, we try to hide from God, and pretend he is not there, but he will always find us.” By the way, that is my definition of atheism: people who cover their eyes with their hands and childishly believe that, “If I cannot see you, God, then you cannot see me.” If I don’t think about you, or believe in you, or love you, then you will no longer exist. In other words, hide-and-seek is not just a child’s game; lots of adults play it, too.

Today’s Responsorial Psalm (Psalm 139) is one of my favorites because it is all about playing hide-and-seek with God. Listen to one verse: “Where can I go from your spirit? From your presence where can I flee?” And then the Psalmist answers his own questions, saying: “If I go to the heavens, you are there; If I sink to the netherworld, you are present there.” The ancient Psalmist was asking and answering the same questions I put to the school children last week: where is your favorite hiding place? And can God find you there? In other words, in every age mankind has tried to play hide-and-seek with God.

Remember how Adam tried to hide after he ate the forbidden fruit? Gn 3:9-10 read: “The Lord God then called to the man and asked him, ‘Where are you?’ Adam answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, but I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid’.” But even our first graders at I.C. could have told Adam, “That’s silly, you can’t hide from God!” But since the beginning of time people have tried to hide from God, and we probably will keep trying until the end of time.

My friends, do you sometimes try to hide from God? Or maybe more likely, you feel like God is hiding from you. You are seeking him, but he has found a secret hiding place that no one knows. Let me give you an example of playing hide-and-seek with God. It comes from St. Augustine’s autobiography called Confessions. Augustine searched for God everywhere – like Psalm 139, he looked he looked in heaven and in the netherworld.

But do you know where he finally found him? God was hiding in Augustine’s heart, which is God’s favorite hiding place. The great Doctor of Grace wrote: “You were more inward to me than my most inward part” (Confessions, Bk. 3. Ch. 6) by which he means his heart. In other words, the reason we do not know God, is because we do not really know ourselves. The search for God also turns out to be a search for ourselves. The human heart is God’s favorite hiding place, and one of the last places we look to find him.

Folks, do you like to play hide-and-seek? You might reply, “Oh, I haven’t played that game since I was a small child!” But I would suggest to you that we are all still playing that game, with each other and with God. That is exactly, the game modern-day atheists are playing: covering their eyes and thinking that if I cannot see God, he cannot see me. But like in that commercial for Trix cereal, our first graders could tell us: “Silly rabbit, hide-and-seek is for kids!”

Praised be Jesus Christ!