By Subhasis Chattopadhyay –
What is it that one gift which we must pray daily to God for, as a community of pilgrims negotiating life in the here and the now? What is this one gift that all of us, Hindu or Christian should ask God for? Which is the one gift that is a discipline within the Yogasutras of Sage Patanjali and this same gift is shown by the Church Fathers to be essential to progress in our journey as strangers and sojourners in this valley of tears? It is the gift of Faith in God.
Contrary to popular belief, Hindu Yoga (there are other Yogas like Buddhist and Jain Yogas) stresses Īśvarapraṇidhāna or serving God for finding the Kingdom of Heaven within oneself. To serve God, one needs Faith in God. Ironically, there is no way to love God if one does not have that grace from God and how can one know God if God does not want to be known to that person? Īśvarapraṇidhāna alone can help us to come closer to God, and that cannot happen unless we seek God in our prayers. Unless we surrender ourselves to God, it is not possible to know that even before we pray for material comforts, God has taken care of our essential needs.
Jesus says: all manners of things will be added unto us if only we seek His Kingdom right now. The essence of all Hinduism and Christianity is this: seek the holy; the rest will be added unto you. It is only God who can make us strangers unto this world where after a while none will remember us anyway. Faith is easy to mouth; it is easy to declare on prime time television and online whether I am a Hindu or a Christian, but hard to remember the Apostles’ Creed when we face hardships. Many are forced to leave institutionalised religions because of systematic sin. They lose faith in God because of the betrayal of men who pretend to be good shepherds while they are just wolves in the clothing of saints. The only way to sustain our faith in God and humanity is to seek ardently, this gift of belief in God. Once we know that God is; it does not matter whether the world despises us. We slowly begin to understand that this world is passing and everything is vanity indeed.
Most of us are not called to experience dark nights of the soul; nor are we called to be heroic in the way of Mahatma Gandhi or even in the ways of St. Teresa of Avila or St. Ignatius of Loyola; but all of us are called to perfect ourselves in the small things that we do. And how does perfection in small things help if we do not love God? How can we love and know God unless God so wills? But the first assent has to come from the human person in the here and the now. Only then, may God respond to us that God indeed is. God is Love not as the world knows it but as holy people before us, and after we are gone, will know this Love.
Therefore let us seek to know and love God alone above all things. Let our cries ascent to him so that He teaches us in our hearts that He exists. This existential truth will free us.
Subhasis Chattopadhyay teaches English at the PG & UG Departments of English at Nara Sinha Dutt College (affiliated to the University of Calcutta), Howrah. He is a book reviewer with the Ramakrishna Mission’s Prabuddha Bharata, and though a Hindu, he studies Catholicism in all its myriad majesty and failings.