How to Build a Personal Relationship with God| National Catholic Register
COMMENTARY: A personal relationship with God grows not by checking boxes, but by engaging the heart in prayer and trust.
Rosary, check. Chaplet, check. Mass, check. Are we just checking off boxes when it comes to God? Where does a personal relationship fall in?
Jesuit Father Mitch Pacwa, EWTN host and president and founder of Ignatius Productions, and Father Wayne Sattler, a priest of the Diocese of Bismarck who lived as a hermit for six years and gives retreats to the Missionaries of Charity, shared their thoughts with the Register about moving God from idea to relationship.
“When you say you believe in God, what does that mean for you exactly?” Father Pacwa asked. “Is he personal? For a lot of people that is part of the challenge.”
In our society, people tend to think of God as “the Force,” like in a movie, according to him.
“People talk about the universe being upset, which is impersonal and a mistaken notion,” he said. “If people understand that God is personal, then the next step is that I have to relate to God on a personal level.”
Father Pacwa pointed to St. Ignatius Loyola, who instructed people to speak to God as a friend.
“Some people are afraid to use those analogies because they don’t want to fall into anthropomorphism — attributing human characteristics to God and making him into a myth,” Father Pacwa said. “They want to believe God is real, but they are going to the sciences to try to comprehend him using a scientific model for their notion of what God can be or is.”
Another saint Father Pacwa recommends reading is St. Augustine of Hippo, who wrote extensively about his conversion and coming to understand that God is not abstract but very personal.
“If God is an abstraction then it is more like the Hindu law of karma — where it is about the law of the universe,” he said. “If he is only an impersonal force, a person doesn’t have to think about sin because that is personal and demands that you do what is right.”
Father Pacwa acknowledged that suffering can also be a challenge for people to see God as personal.
“If God is personal and I’m dealing with something bad, there can be a sense that God is picking on me,” he said. “But if God allows suffering to take place, he’s going to be with me to help me cope. It has another level of meaning and purpose.”
It’s important, Father Pacwa noted, to differentiate that God allows suffering but does not cause it, and to realize there is a spiritual war and evil going on, but God is with us through it.
Opening Your Heart to God
Father Sattler’s most recent book, Remain in Me and I in You: Relating to God as a Person, Not an Idea, explains that it is common for us to treat people and God as ideas. “Even married couples can treat each other as ideas rather than engaging with their heart,” he explained. “We do it with everybody and we do it with God.”
Father Sattler pointed to the story of the rich young man in the New Testament who asked Jesus what he must do to gain eternal life. Jesus told him to sell all his possessions, give the money to the poor and then to follow him. The man left saddened.
“The one who is the Eternal Life is right with him,” Father Sattler explained, “but he’s too wrapped up in his own ideas on what eternal life is and does not engage his heart.”
He noted further that the apostles dropped everything to follow Jesus because they allowed their hearts to be engaged and not because Jesus checked off all the boxes for what they expected to find.
“I still treat God as an idea sometimes.” Father Sattler admitted. “He does not always match my expectations and that’s when I have to go back into prayer and engage him and trust him. It doesn’t mean it’s always going to make sense in my head, but it allows me to be settled by his presence and be reassured that he is with me. This is the one who knows everything and can do anything and loves me. He is present, and he has a plan, and I let that settle into my heart.”
Raising Children for Relationship
Father Sattler advises parents to engage their children’s hearts to help guide them into relationship with God. “With both people and with God, this is the key. It takes work, but it is worth it because then you have an authentic relationship.”
Father Sattler recommends quieting down with children and giving them heart-to-heart time such as reading or visiting and then later praying with them, talking to God. After first reconciliation and first communion, when children report having a good feeling, he suggests helping them identify that the feeling is Jesus in their heart.
“You are planting seeds, but it’s not a science,” he said. “It will happen differently in different souls. Even if you do all the right things, there’s no guarantee, since children ultimately choose what they will do.”
Our Yoke Adjustment
“I have come to see that God saves me again and again and loves me in a deeper and deeper way,” Father Sattler shared. “And my confidence grows in him, that there is always a plan and a purpose even when it’s not matching my ideas — especially when it’s not matching my ideas. My prayer time is my yoke adjustment for when I forget that God is the one showing me the way and I’m following him instead of me being my own God and my own savior.”
Everyone struggles with relationships at times, but God is really seeking us, according to Father Sattler. “He wants it to happen more than we do, but there’s no substitute for taking time to be alone with God. It may at times be checking off boxes, but that starts to form a practice. It starts with time with God and instead of being in our heads the whole time, we can move into our hearts.
“That’s why it is so important to spend time alone with God,” Father Sattler said. “A relationship with him is not going to come from you or from a book; it’s going to come from God.”
