"Well, where did I find you to meet you -because you were certainly not in my memory before I knew you- where I found you, then, to meet you, but you about me?" There is absolutely no place, and we stray and approach, and yet there is no place. Oh right! you preside everywhere to all who consult you, and at the same time, you answer all those who consult you, even if they are different things. Your answer, but not all hear clearly. They all consult you about what they want, but not all always hear what they want. Your best minister is the one who does not attend so much to hear from you what he would like to want what he hears from you." (Confessions, Book X, chap. 26).

 

St. Augustine in this paragraph summarizes, in my opinion, with the great finesse of spirit the message that today's video wants to convey to us. Which is no other than the testimony of two "excellent ministers", who have not expected to hear from God so much what they wanted, as much as what they have heard from God? Or in other words: the two have heard the voice of that truth that presided over them, the one they sought and consulted (in a retreat one, in a mission the other), and this responded "clearly". And although in general, not all hear their voice, because they do not always listen to what they want or expect to hear from it, our video priests did. They listened to it and even followed it, because deep down they accepted and wanted their response, what they heard about it as they were presented to them.

The two, in turn, were "they turned away and approached", and so at a certain point, they were immersed in that deep experience of contact with the mercy of God, with the vocation, which exceeds all calculation and expectation. "There is no place" neither physical nor conceptual that can explain or set the parameters of the activity of His grace. Because God is the one who is more intimate to us than ourselves, and it is worth the most unusual opportunities to bring us back to Him. He speaks to us and calls from the innermost spaces of our hearts ("In You About Me" as Augustine says), through the infinite abyss that we are to ourselves. There he confirms his love. And yet everything transcends and penetrates everything -from the top of the cosmos to the slightest of the micro-cosmos- with paradoxical irony, it is allowed to find and contain in specific places, determining with almost exaggerated precision, in the humble expression of the ministers of his Church for example, and especially in the bread and wine that they carry us.

Here is the other fundamental point of the experience of our two friends priests. They both discovered that call from God to continue to make it possible for that presence to be literally at the fingertips of all. They understood in the first person the value of that presence and the need that God has of mediators to be able to continue to reach the ends of the world and the existential peripheries. The need of the lord of priests.

Or in the words of St. Augustine, they understood that:

Who's going to call you if he doesn't know you before? Because, not knowing, you can easily invoke one thing for another. Will you rather not be summoned to be known? But how will they invoke the one they have not believed in? And how will they believe if they are not preached to them? (Confessions, Book I, chap. 1).

This truth continues to challenge us. It needs even workers mediators who carry that bread that can quench the hunger of eternal life that men have. She (the Truth) worries us and continues to replay with clarity, like the murmur of the crystalline water. If we silence for a moment, we can listen to the voice (even though this video). If by chance you perceive that you are one of those ministers that it calls, listen to it with the best attitude, ie, wanting to embrace what you hear from it. Well, wanting it will come to know it, and knowledge will truly believe in what has been preached to you, and believe you will follow it, and on the way a good day you can say with dramatic happiness: 

How will I pay the Lord all the good he has done to me? I will raise the cup of salvation, invoking his name. I will fulfill the Lord my vows in the presence of all the people. Sal. 115