I had an experience. A spiritual experience. I think it was from my guardian angel, but it could have been directly from the Holy Spirit. I don’t know. Either way, it was a positive thing and sort of life-changing, even though it lasted only a moment.
I was studying the gospel for the day – Saturday in the 3rd week of Ordinary Time (Mk 4:35-41). It is the story of the sudden storm that struck the disciples on the Sea of Galilee while Jesus slept on a cushion at the back of the boat. The storm was so fierce that the disciples feared for their lives and finally awakened Jesus. They must have been shouting to be heard over the squall, “Master, do you not care? We are going down!” Jesus rose and rebuked the wind and sea, and immediately the sea settled down, and a great calm came over it.
The disciples were dumbfounded, awestruck by what had happened. They asked one another, “Who can this be? Even the wind and sea obey him! Of course, Jesus was showing, through this action, who he is. Only God could do such a thing! That’s when it happened. That’s when I realized, in a moment of “enlightenment”, who Jesus really is. I had been imagining myself in the boat with the disciples, experiencing the same thing as them, but I grasped what they did not: Jesus really is God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, the Lord!
I basked joyfully in my experience for a couple of days, and as I returned to my prayer and study, I became aware of something I had never paid much attention to before. The Gospels are like one long exclamation of who Jesus really is. He is constantly telling his disciples and the Pharisees by his words and actions, Hey, it’s me! I am Lord! And he is not alone. Others are saying the same thing. The Angel Gabriel declared him God to Mary before his conception (Lk 1:32-35). At the Visitation, Elizabeth calls Mary the mother of my Lord (Lk 1:43)! At his Nativity, the Angels declared it (Lk 2:11). All his miracles and exorcisms speak to it. When he claims, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6) and “I am the Resurrection and the life” (Jn 11:25), he is saying he is God. In fact, every time he uses “I am” in reference to himself, he is saying it (CCC 653, 211). It is a constant thread that runs through the Gospels. Even at the end of his life, a pagan soldier declared, “Truly this man was the Son of God” (Mk 15:39).
I am sure many of you have had similar realizations. But for me it was something new. Of course, I, too, believed Jesus is God, but I had never really experienced it before. I am not telling a story here. Perhaps someone needs to know that prayer and study of the Gospels really do pay off. Or at least they can. That’s why I am writing this: it’s not something you keep to yourself, even if you wanted to. It needs to be told and repeated – in my experience – and the witness of the Gospels, Jesus really is Lord!
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