God Was in the Room First
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
I went to confession recently and, for whatever reason, I was nervous. Not terrified. Nothing dramatic. Just rattled enough that I was short and to the point. I confessed my sins, stumbled through it a little, listened to the priest, received absolution and my penance, and walked out.
And immediately I wondered:
Lord, why was I nervous?
I know what confession is. I know the priest acts in the person of Christ. I know God's mercy. I know that God already knows the sins I am confessing.
Yet there I was, nervous about saying them out loud. The rosary was ending before Mass. The Blessed Sacrament was being reposed. People were settling into the ordinary rhythm of a Tuesday evening church.
Then I looked at the missal and saw the eyes of Christ on the front cover.
It wasn't an accusing look.
It wasn't, I saw what you did.
The thought that struck me was much simpler:
Nervous? I was there then, and I am still here now. Always
That stayed with me.
Because I spend a lot of time trying to “remember” God while living as though the visible world is the whole world.
I can even make my faith part of that habit. I explain myself to Christ. I reason through my circumstances. I tell Him why something is difficult, why I reacted a certain way, why this temptation is different, why this situation deserves an exception.
And certainly God knows our weakness. He made us. Christ knows the human heart better than we do.
But sometimes even “God understands” can quietly become me trying to fit Christ inside my understanding of reality.
Christianity asks me to do the opposite. It asks me to live inside His reality.
God is present whether I remember Him or not.
His Kingdom is already among us, even though we await its fullness.
Every person I encounter possesses an immortal soul.
Every person has a guardian angel.
The Church is larger than the people I can see in the pews. The faithful on earth, the souls being purified and the saints in glory belong to the one communion of Christ. At Mass, heaven has not disappeared because I cannot see it. Christ does not become present because I manage to feel particularly spiritual. There is an entire order of creation surrounding my ordinary life that my senses cannot perceive.
And somehow, I keep forgetting it.
Maybe that is part of why temptation can become so convincing.
Anger says, this offense is everything.
Anxiety says, this possible future is everything.
Pride says, my understanding is everything.
Control says, if I don't fix this, everything will fall apart.
Temptation shrinks the universe down to whatever is immediately in front of me.Faith opens the room again.
Christ is still here.
That has become increasingly important to me as a father.
There are moments when my son is upset, the schedule has fallen apart, someone has made a decision I disagree with, or I can already see where a particular behavior might lead.
Everything in me can start saying:
Fix it.
Correct it.
Explain it.
Make everybody understand.
Get this back under control.
But God was in the room before Dad started talking. That doesn't mean fathers become passive. We still teach. We correct. We establish boundaries. We protect. We apologize when we're wrong. We discipline when necessary. We prepare our children for the consequences of their choices.
But there is a tremendous difference between fatherhood and providence.
I am a father.
I am not Providence.
My son has a Father who sees things I cannot see.
And perhaps one of the quiet disciplines of Christian fatherhood is learning when I have done what belongs to me and trusting God with what does not.
That Tuesday evening Mass reinforced the lesson. The visiting priest wasn't flashy. His homily was essentially the life of St. Louis IX. He celebrated Mass reverently and straightforwardly. Communion was distributed. Mass ended. That was it.
No spectacle. No attempt to manufacture an experience.
No need to convince the people sitting in church on a Tuesday evening that something important was happening.
The Church simply did what the Church does.
And maybe that simplicity helped me see it.
Reality doesn't depend upon my emotional experience of it.
The Eucharist is Christ whether I am overwhelmed by it or distracted.
Absolution is real whether I walk out feeling spiritually magnificent or wondering why I was nervous.
God's providence is operating whether I understand today's events or spend the entire day confused by them.
And Christ is King whether I remember His Kingdom every five minutes or become temporarily consumed by the tiny kingdom inside my own head.
One day there will be no difficulty seeing this.
At the Last Judgment, God will not suddenly become just.
His justice will be revealed.
Providence will not suddenly begin making sense.
What God has been doing throughout history will be brought into the light.
The dots that look scattered to us now will no longer be scattered.
Until then, we live by faith.
Maybe that means Christian formation isn't primarily learning to imagine God watching us.
It is learning to remember how much of reality we cannot see.
The angels are real.
The saints are alive in Christ.
The Kingdom has begun.
Grace is operating.
Christ is present.
And the Father has not surrendered His creation simply because I cannot understand what He is doing with it today.
So when the house becomes loud, when fatherhood becomes confusing, when temptation narrows my vision, or when anxiety tells me everything depends upon what I do next, perhaps I don't always need another solution.
Sometimes I need to look up.
Not because Christ has suddenly entered the room.
Because He was already there.
And perhaps formation begins when we stop trying to fit God into the world we can see and begin learning to live faithfully in the world God has actually made.