The ancient Greeks had big ideas. We know that their philosophy, architecture, plays, and poetry have successfully traveled through the ages and still influence Western education in varied ways. But we also know from mythology that, although their shrines and temples were magnificent, their gods were often capricious, amoral, and threatening. So Paul, a single disciple of the Risen Jesus, stands before the Greeks in the shadow of their magnificent temples and tells them of a different God, a wondrous God, larger than their sanctuaries, transcending any need for human service, and maker of all that exists. This God is beyond image or imagination and yet “is not far from us.” Indeed we are “the offspring of God” who sets ways for us to seek and find God, above all in Jesus the Christ, who was confirmed by this God through resurrection from the dead.
As believers, we may find on occasion that our image of God needs some of the tweaking that Paul provides for the
Greeks. It is always healthy to ask: Just who is my God? And what does Jesus and his resurrection bring to that question? The answer is unfolding. Jesus promises us, his disciples, that he will tell us more when we are ready; he promises that the Spirit of truth will lead us to all truth. But lest we get caught in contemporary abstractions of God, as Christians we note what Jesus says of the Spirit of truth: “He will glorify me because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.” It seems the Spirit of truth is born of communion: the communion Jesus has with the Father and shares through the Spirit. In this relationship, the truth of God comes through love, the only real way of knowing God.

Sr. Mary Kay Oosdyke

Mary Kay Oosdyke, OP, a Dominican sister of Grand Rapids, Michigan, teaches theology in diocesan diaconate programs and college senior-adult programs. She is actively involved in adult faith education and spiritual formation in parishes and spirituality centers.