The best person I know

I remember when I was growing up, a personal relationship with Jesus was the last thing on my mind. I hated going to Mass (yeah, you read that correctly), and I strictly avoided any type of prayer whenever I could. When I look back on it now, I really believe the reason is because I didn’t have any type of relationship with Jesus. Strangely enough, I still believed in the true presence of the Eucharist, and that saved me from a lot.

Truth to be told, a big part of the reason I hated Mass and prayer was because I was terrified of Jesus. I saw Him as this sort of punisher, I guess, and thought that if I put one toe out of line then I was going to be sent straight to hell. The problem was that I was caught up in the rules of the Catholic faith: go to Mass on Sundays, go to Confession frequently, pray every day, and if you don’t do that, then you’re going to hell. And, as a result, I was terrified. Because, really, who can love a God like that?

And then something happened when I was fifteen that completely blew my mind. I was at my youth group, and there was a picture of the Divine Mercy image hanging up (there is a giant picture in my old parish) and my parish priest looked at that picture and told me, “I love Him very much.”

Honestly, that confused me. I think it was the first time it had ever occurred to me to love Jesus. And when I heard Father say that, I actually thought to myself, “I wish I loved Him, too.” And that set me on a journey to love Christ that would change my life.

Now, eighteen years later, I’ve finally figured it out (well, at least a little bit). The key to a good faith isn’t in the rules of Catholicism… but in the arms of Mary. After all, the entire point of going to Mass is to receive Jesus and to become more like Him. And in order to become more like Him, we need to understand Him. And while going to the Sacraments and prayer is crucial for growing in and maintaining faith, if that’s all we do, if we don’t take the time to get to know and form a relationship with Jesus Christ… we miss out.

Jesus is God. But, He is also human. He’s a person who loves—who loves us. If we really want to understand who Jesus is, we only need to look at the Gospels, especially the Passion. In the Gospels, time and time again, His message is one of love, forgiveness, mercy, compassion, and kindness. His message is continually of a God who wants to embrace the most lowly, forgotten, abandoned, rejected, hated, the sinner—us. In the Passion, we see a God who did not call down the power He had, who did not summon an entire legion of angels who could have smote the people who dared to attack Him. Instead, Jesus did it all willingly, and with love, embracing the Cross. He didn’t say a word, and neither did Mary. Instead, he bore it all willingly and for one simple reason: He wanted to, because He loves us, and wanted us to be able to go to Heaven.

It’s understandably hard for any of us to wrap our mind around that. But it’s crucial that we do, and I’ll tell you why. Without a relationship with Jesus, without a genuine love of Him, and more importantly, a genuine understanding of His love of us (at least, as much is possible), we miss the point. After all, the point of Mass is to receive Jesus in the Eucharist, to help guide us in our faith with Him. The point of Confession is to tell Jesus that we’re sorry, and that we want to do better. The point of prayer is to draw strength from Him. Everything we do, the entire Catholic faith, is centered around Jesus Christ.      

So if we don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus, we’re missing out on something life-changing. We’re missing out on the best part of life, the source of our happiness and strength, the reason for our existence. We will miss out on knowing the best person there is, a person who loves us, who wants us to be happy, who would do anything for us, who died for us! Who wouldn’t want to know a person like that? Who wouldn’t love a God like that? It seems too good to be true—but it’s not! Jesus is real, and He loves us so much! He cares about us as if we were the only person in the world, and if we were the only person in the whole wide world, He would still have died for us. That’s who Jesus is.

I’m not saying that we should have a personal relationship with Jesus because it’s a sin if we don’t. I’m saying we should have a personal relationship with Him because He loves us, and because He’s a great person! He’s loving and kind, and involved in our lives, and He takes care of us. He listens to us, helps us, provides for us, protects us, He’s there for us when we suffer and gives us joys beyond imagining. He must have a sense of humor, because some of the animals He created are just hilarious (take my dog, Scooby, for example, he’s a hoot!). He’s artistic—just look at the colors of the sunset, or the beauty of the mountains and oceans. We can be ourselves around Jesus, because nobody knows us better than Him. He accepts us and loves us just as we are, unconditionally.

As Catholics, we can often get too caught up in the rules and regulations. I know I can, and I certainly have in the past. But Jesus didn’t give us our faith so that we could get sucked into the rules and forget about what really matters. He gave us our faith to help us fall more deeply in love with Him, and to be just as crazy about Him as He about us.

So, how to have a personal relationship with Jesus? It isn’t hard at all. Just talk to Him, every day. It doesn’t have to be a rosary, or chaplet, or certain structured prayers. It can be things like, “help me get through this today,” or “thank you for my children.” It can be listening to Christian music (I love K-LOVE), or reading inspiring memes about Jesus, watching Christian movies, going to Adoration, having a prayer journal, reading the Bible. It could be as simple as loving someone, and seeing Jesus in them (and yes, that includes you). But the most important thing you can do is just ask Him. “Lord, please show me how to have a relationship with You, and to love You.” He’ll do it. I promise you.

I can tell you that my life radically changed that day, when a parish priest told me simply, “I love Him very much.” That meant more to me than any homily I had ever heard, and inspired me more than anything else he could have said. Now, I, at long last, love Jesus very much. I hope and pray to continue to grow in love for Him, because He’s the best person I know.