Tomislav Ivančić, from the book ‘Father’
WHO ARE YOU, GOD?
I immerse myself in God’s presence
I sail through space in my mind. I’m looking for an end to everything. Is there a space where there is “nothing” anymore? Nothingness does not exist. If it were nothingness, then it would be nothingness now. Something cannot come from nothing. There must always have been something. This means that behind everything transitory there must be something everlasting. Something that never came into being and cannot disappear. Something that is the beginning of everything and can never disappear. Something that is the beginning of all that comes and goes. Everything around me has a beginning. I, too, was created once. In myself, I experience how everything ephemeral flows into the permanent.
I feel some force holding the dead matter together. I experience how some contemplative deep presence creates intelligent solutions around me in the world. Man imitates that intelligence. Man learns from nature. Man applies the laws that some other reason instilled in the reality around him. My life was created. There must be some life that never came into being. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here either. We are all subject to death and disappearance. And some force holds the inert matter so that everything does not turn into a morgue.
I feel that everything transitory passes by me and only the core of everything remains. Some warm, bright force is around me and in me. A kind face is leaning over me. Someone is there, someone who prepared the environment for me to live in. Someone thought of me before I came into the world. Everything around me is soaked with someone’s presence. Some unusual Love encompasses me and attracts me.
I surrender to that Love. It’s like I’m swimming in water. I immerse myself in presence.
Someone is here…
Good, caring, faithful, confident, ready to accept me. I absorb the entire universe, the immensity of perspectives, the inscrutability of the laws of nature, the irresistibility of love, the charm of beauty, the warmth of infinite eyes. Everything is in safe hands. Not only me, but all people are surrounded by this benevolence.
The entire human history is in the hands of Someone.
Someone is hiding around me. Love, thought, beauty, laws reveals Him. My soul full of longing for meaning and understanding recognizes him. … Someone… Oh, God…
The foundation of everything is here.
I stand and live on that foundation. Life is a beautiful journey of searching and discovering.
I am looking for you, because I already have you and because I have already found you, God…
He was born in Davor in 1938. After studying philosophy and theology in Zagreb and Rome, he was ordained a priest of the Zagreb Archdiocese in 1966. After achieving a master’s degree in philosophy and a doctorate in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, he returned to Zagreb in 1971, where he became a professor at the Catholic Faculty of Theology, University of Zagreb. He is the head of the Chair of Fundamental Theology, and was one of the editors of the Theological Review. Areas of his scientific work are philosophy, theology and literature. He explores the relationship between philosophy and theology, faith and science, atheism and religiosity, revelation and faith, the Church and ecclesial communities, Christianity and religion, the phenomenon of sects and issues of theological epistemology. His special field of interest is the study of man’s existential-spiritual dimension, where he discovers the way of modern evangelization and the necessity of the development of spiritual medicine, which, along with somatic and psychological, is indispensable in the complete healing of man, especially in the healing of spiritual diseases and addictions. For this purpose, he developed the method of hagiotherapy and founded in 1990 in Zagreb the Center for Spiritual Help, of which he is the head. From 1971, in addition to working at the faculty, he was a student religious teacher in Zagreb, the initiator of the prayer movement within the Church of the Croats, the founder of a religious society called the Prayer and Word Community(MiR), and the leader of numerous seminars for spiritual renewal and evangelization at home and abroad. After completing his studies and scientific doctorate in fundamental theology at … (Read more at https://hagio.hr/tomislav-ivancic/).
