I’m currently teaching a university third-year level unit on research methods.
The students have 12 weeks to design a small 12-month women’s health research project.
It must be a real-life project on a real health problem—it should work if someone decided to do it.
These students are mostly young (20-21 years old) and have never done anything like this before.
So we teach them all the steps they need to know. Each week, they spend three hours in a room with a tutor like me.
I work my way around the room and sit with them personally to help them iron out the bugs in their project.
But it’s always interesting to see how students react when I appear next to them.
Some of them look at me like a rabbit in the headlights. They’ve been chatting for most of the class.
Or they’ve been scrolling on their phone when they should have been working on their project.
Some of them groan because they know what’s coming next.
They have been working on the project but it’s not going to plan, and now they’re in a muddle.
They feel embarrassed by this and need reassuring that they’re not stupid, they’re just learning.
But some of them are overjoyed to see me because they know that I’ll help them with specific problems.
They happily show me the muddles and answer my more searching questions.
We sort it all out, and they keep making good progress each week.
There are some thumpingly obvious analogies here with the spiritual life. It comes down to knowing a person.
The students who are happiest to see me are the ones who know me best.
They know I’m not going to laugh at them (well, not very much), and that I am absolutely going to help them.
Yes, that may involve awkward questions and me discovering that they haven’t been paying attention.
But they know that I want them to succeed with this project.
The ones who look at me like a rabbit in the headlights are often the ones who also know me—but in a different way.
To them, I am the person who gave them a lower mark than they thought they deserved on a piece of work in a previous semester.
I wish they could see that I am only trying to help them do better. After all, my job is to set them straight about the quality (or lack thereof) of their work.
The ones who groan also know me—again, in a different way.
To them, I am the person who is going to tell them that they’re currently on the wrong track.
They may have to go back to an earlier stage of the project and change direction so that it will work out.
When I think about this, I also reflect on how I approach God in prayer and in the sacraments.
There are times when I do the rabbit in the headlights look, because I know I’ve been slacking.
There are times when I groan, because I think something is going to hurt me—like having to address my habitual faults (oh the agony!)
And sometimes I am glad to see him because I know he will help me. But I don’t think this happens nearly often enough.
Today’s Gospel is on the same theme. How well do you really know Jesus?
When you really know someone, you know if you can trust them or not.
My students know that they can trust me to help them. But some of them want help entirely on their own terms.
Some want help but are worried about how much it will hurt them personally.
Some don’t want help at all and resent me offering it.
And some trust me to help them and can swallow their pride long enough to let that happen.
God is far kinder a teacher than I am. If you know him, then you know that you have nothing to fear from him.
You need to show him the mistakes and the muddles so that he can sort them out.
But if you can’t trust God—if you won’t show him the problems and listen to the solutions—do you really know him at all?
Are you the student who thinks their project is just fine as it is, and that God should mind his own business?
There’s a final exam where God will assess that project. What he sees will be a measure of how much you really knew him.
Let him sit next to you and help you. It will be worth it.
