Knowing

Hello, my name is Norman, and I am a nerd.  I always have been, and with sixty years of nerdhood behind me, it’s a pretty safe bet that I always will be.

I read voraciously; number games spin around in my head; I revel in crossword puzzles and jigsaws, Sudoku and Ken-Ken, cryptograms and acrostics.  I was never very athletic, but I know about all the strategies and statistics.  And like most nerds, I would have been voted “most socially inept” in high school if we had had such a superlative.

Today, I’m still more wallflower than butterfly, but at least I understand the rationale behind my nerdy social ineptitude.  Like most nerds, I know a lot about a lot of things.  Yet knowing about things is not the same as knowing things.  As long as I remain in the world of things, this distinction is not that important.  But when I enter the world of people, it becomes critical.

I can learn a lot about another person by simply applying my highly developed nerd study skills.  That’s okay, but if I don’t go beyond that, I’m simply an extra in The Big Bang Theory.  The only way to move beyond “knowing about” a person to “knowing” a person is to be with that person, to share experiences and feelings, likes and dislikes with that person, to laugh and mourn with that person, to celebrate and commiserate with that person.  It is only in relationship that we can truly know a person.

By definition, this relationship thing is awkward for most nerds like me, for it takes us far beyond our “knowing about” comfort zone.  But if we’re lucky, we get past this at least once in our lives, and, if we’re really lucky, as I have been, one of those times can lead to a lifetime relationship with a spouse whom we come to know as well as we know ourselves, with whom we become as one, and without whom we are incomplete.

Since our very creation, the Bible tells us, God has desired this same intimate relationship with each one of us.  He wants us to know Him that we might feel one with him, desperately incomplete without Him.  And yet, in our pride, in our desire to simply know ourselves, we shy away from God, refusing his invitation to relationship, to knowing.  Perhaps this is natural, for there was and is an unimaginably vast difference between the infinite, almighty God and our mere mortal and temporal world.  It makes sense that we are more comfortable in a world we can see and hear, touch and taste.  Yet, God will not abandon us.

God becomes one of us.  He becomes Emmanuel – “with us” – taking on our creatureliness and our frailty, taking on our pains and our sufferings, our life and our death, that we might come to know Him better, that we might be one with Him forever.   We will soon enter into great celebration of this amazing gift of incarnation, as we do each year at Christmas time. 

And yet, and yet, how often I can still resist the relationship.  Surely, I know a lot about Jesus – and it's good that I know a lot about Jesus – but it’s not good enough. 

How well do I share my successes and my failures with Jesus in prayer?  How well do I celebrate with Jesus in the sacraments, opening myself up to his presence, his mercy and his love?  How well do I join with Jesus in service to others, as he has served me?  How well do I see my spousal relationship with Mary – a relationship I know I would be completely lost without – how well do I see this relationship not simply as my good fortune, but as a blessing from God, a sign of the relationship God desires to have with me?  How well do I know Jesus, Emmanuel who has always been with me, and who promises to be with me until the end of the age?

These are the Advent questions we ponder as we prepare to rejoice in the relationship that God has desired to have with us from the very beginning, that God made possible through the incarnation of his only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and that God strengthens and encourages us to live through the Holy Spirit who abides in us.