The Psalmist prayed to God, saying: “O God, be gracious and bless us and let your face shed its light upon us.”  

That prayer was said for a reason, and its continuation points to the reason: “O God, be gracious and bless us, and let your face shed its light upon us. So that your ways be known upon earth and all nations learn your saving help.”

Light dispels darkness.  The Psalmist prayed that the light of God may dispel the darkness of ignorance, ignorance of the ways of God.

Perhaps you wonder what the purpose of religion is.  You wonder why you have to be at Mass, why you have to listen to the word of God, and why you have to receive the sacrament.

The reason is found in the words of that prayer: The purpose of religion is to seek the face of God so that the light of his face will shine on our minds and on our path in life, so that God’s ways may be known, and, the ways of God shown to us, we will not go astray in life.  We will remain on the right track as we pass through this life on our journey back to God.

God answered the prayer of the Psalmist by sending his Son, Christ Jesus.  For, as we learn from the Gospel according to John, “No one has ever seen God: It is the only Son who is close to the Father’s heart who has made him known” (John 1:18).

God answered the prayer in the promise Jesus made to his apostles when he said to them as he was about to leave them, “the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you.”

God answered that prayer at Pentecost, at the coming of the Holy Spirit, the feast we shall soon celebrate.  The Holy Spirit is the light of God’s face dispelling darkness of ignorance from our hearts.  This ignorance is not cleared in the library, in the laboratory, or in the lecture halls of a university, as important as these may be.  The ignorance of which we speak is ignorance of God, ignorance of our need for God in our lives.

Jesus promised the Holy Spirit.  But we often act as if we did not want what Jesus promised.  We need the Holy Spirit.  But, quite often, what we need we do not want, and what we want we do not need.  We know what we want, but we do not know what we need. 

We want pleasure.  The desire for pleasure is strong in every human being.  We desire pleasures of food, of drinking, watching movies, of sexual activity outside the boundaries of married life.  We think these alone will give us fulfilment.  We then look for money to procure them, and power to procure the money.  But even after we obtain what we want, we remain restless because we do not have what we need, lost in restlessness in the underbelly of the deep ocean of pleasure.  We remain restless because our life is more precious than the things we crave for.  We seem to be saying the things we crave for are more precious than life itself.  So, we are tempted to ruin our lives in order to have them.  Jesus, for his part, is asking us: “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his life?”

What does it profit a student if he has been cheating in examinations from 100 Level, only to be caught red-handed in his last examination at 400 Level?  What does it profit a student who has been into drugs all his years in university, only to be found in the last semester of 400 Level?

In response to the prayer of the Psalmist, that God show us the light of his face so that we may know his ways in this earthly life, Jesus offers us the Holy Spirit to teach us all things, to teach us the true meaning of life, to teach us so that we do not go astray, so that we do not ruin the precious gift of life that God has given us.   Jesus offers us the Holy Spirit to teach us that life is more precious than our cravings.

Every human being is hungry and thirsty.  But, in poor judgement, we sometimes fall into the temptation of making a U-turn on the road that leads to the source of living food and the stream of living water that God himself is.  It is not that religion no longer matters.  Rather, the religion that adores and glorifies God no longer matters to some.  What matters to them is the religion that adores and glorifies the human being even in his self-inflicted misery. 

We desire to be fulfilled.  But we do not want to see the face of the one in whom we can find fulfillment.  We do not want to face the most important existential question—the question of God.

Our fulfilment begins when we seek to understand what it means to be human.  The fulfillment of human existence is found in something greater and higher than the material.  To limit ourselves to just what is material, to just what we desire, produce and consume is to do injustice to ourselves and to our common life.  Material things please our senses.   But they leave us restless, always craving for more.  Pleasing our senses is important.  But the fulfillment we need is more than what pleases the senses.  Pleasure is good.  But it is transient.  No matter how delicious the food on your plate is, its quantity diminishes the more you eat it.   Hard drugs can make you feel good.  But only for a moment.  And that momentary pleasure can destroy you for the rest of your life.  No matter how pleasurable sexual activity is, its momentary pleasure can destroy a whole life. Engaged in outside the boundaries of marital love, someone is going to feel used and wounded at one point in time.  Irresponsible sexual activity can and has destroyed lives, can and has destroyed cities.  Seeking pleasure is not in itself evil.  What is evil is pursuit of pleasure in total disregard for the dictates of reason.

We are not the first to be seduced by pleasure.  Pleasure’s seduction is as old as the human race.  St. Augustine of Hippo was enslaved and bound by the chains of pleasure—pleasure of fame, pleasure of sex.  He had it all.  He drank from the cup of pleasure to its last drop. But he remained restless.  He sought satisfaction in the beautiful things of this life.  He found the beautiful things of this life.  But he found no satisfaction, no fulfillment.  He remained restless until God found him, or rather, until he allowed himself to be found by God. So, he wrote in his, Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you…. Late have I loved you, Beauty ever ancient, ever new.  Late have I loved you.  You were within me.  But I was outside myself.”

By sending us Jesus, his Son, God is, as it were, searching for you and for me.  Would we allow ourselves to be found?  Or, shall we continue to hide in the belly of the deep ocean of pleasure? 

The Holy Spirit taught St. Augustine, after his years of living a wayward life, that human life transcends the things we crave for.  We are not mobile bundles of sensations seeking fulfilment by subjugating ourselves to the dictatorship of pleasure, of consumption and production in the regime of impersonal and implacable market forces.

Surrounded by gadgets and nourished by fast food, we remain hungry because we are starved of love.   But the Holy Spirit, the gift of the risen Son of God at Pentecost, the gift given to us at baptism and at confirmation, invites us and leads us to Mass to be fed with the word of God, and nourished at the altar of Holy Communion where Jesus serves himself as food.  The Mass is where the prayer of the Psalmist is answered.  This is where the Lord lets his face shine on us and leads us aright.  The Mass is where we find fulfilment.

Father Anthony Akinwale, OP