Can You See God?: Personal Essays Reflecting on GodaEUR(tm)s Presence in Our World

By Veronica Grace

Can you see God? You don't have to be a mystic to see God's presence in your life. Prayer, community, silence, and the ordinary can be opportunities to see God. This book's series of personal essays explores how we can see God in our everyday lives, from the miraculous to the mundane and even the suffering.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hawes & Jenkins Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9781637843598

Book preview

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Can You See God?

Personal Essays Reflecting on GodaEUR(tm)s Presence in Our World

Veronica Grace

ISBN 978-1-63784-358-1 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63784-359-8 (digital)

Copyright © 2024 by Veronica Grace

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Hawes & Jenkins Publishing

16427 N Scottsdale Road Suite 410

Scottsdale, AZ 85254

www.hawesjenkins.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

I dedicate this book to the Jesuits at Le Moyne, who taught me the importance of seeing God in everything. May God bless you and keep you.

Introduction: Can You See God in Everything?

Can You See God in Everything?

Chapter 1

God Is in Our Neighbor

Chapter 2

God Is in Our Pain

Chapter 3

God Is in the Mundane

Chapter 4

God Is in Nature

Chapter 5

God Is in the Church

Chapter 6

God Is in Our Rest

Chapter 7

God Is in Our Prayer

Chapter 8

God Is in Our Desires

Chapter 9

God Is in Our Sense of Humor

Chapter 10

God Is in Our Mortality

Epilogue: I See God in Everything

I See God in Everything

About the Author

I dedicate this book to the Jesuits at Le Moyne, who taught me the importance of seeing God in everything. May God bless you and keep you.

Introduction: Can You See God in Everything?

Can You See God in Everything?

If I close my eyes and turn my face toward the wind, I can send myself back to Syracuse. It was always windy there, especially in the fall and winter. I could turn my face in every direction, cover it with every scrap of cloth, and still get blasted with the stinging cold winter air sprinkled with snowflakes. But the brutal winters are not the only aspect of Syracuse I remember.

What I remember most about Syracuse is my dear alma mater, Le Moyne College. It is a Jesuit-run college (aka a Catholic college for laypersons, a Catholic college in name only for the rad traditionalists). This means they established the campus, lived on it, taught and interacted with its students, and most importantly, acted as Christ to those in need. In short, the Jesuits lived and breathed Le Moyne. They even worked with the college administration to create Le Moyne's motto. Well, actually, it has two mottos—a marketing motto plastered throughout campus and an unspoken one that the Jesuits more or less personified.

The first motto is Greatness meets Goodness. In other words, Le Moyne was the campus where the extraordinary was intertwined with the holy. Personally, I never liked this motto because, for me, God was already present in the extraordinary. One only has to read the first pages of the Bible to see God at work in the extraordinary as He creates the universe single-handedly by only speaking, Let there be light. No, I didn't need help seeing God in miracles because we expect God in miracles. Instead, I needed to find Him in the ordinary and even in the miseries life hands us. Thus I far more enjoyed the unspoken motto. Now if you had ears and had spent any amount of time with the Jesuits, you would have heard the motto spoken aloud—See God in everything. This was the unspoken spoken (a bit of a paradox) motto of Le Moyne and Ignatian spirituality. It was a vital part of the Ignatian spiritual exercises, where you revisit and examine your day and search for God's presence. And luckily, I had four years to learn and practice it, which made it a vital part of my life as well.

Le Moyne was my home for four years, and each year started the same with Mass on the Grass. Students from all religious or nonreligious backgrounds would gather around the altar stationed outside of the campus ministry building with lawn chairs or blankets. My