2024/04/22

"All Who Are Led by the Spirit of God Are Sons of God" (Romans 8:14)
Calligraphy by Calligrapher Kinu Yamazaki

140. All Who Are Led by the Spirit of God Are Sons of God

I got baptised when I was 21, under the circumstances I wrote about in the previous article. Eventually, as I began to know the different experiences of other believers in sharing with them, I discovered that God visits people daily and carries them by his hands. I recalled the following words of Jesus to Nicode'mus who visited him at night: "The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit" (John 3:8). 

Almighty God's manner of leading people deeply imprints the image of the perfect and true parent in the memory of those obediently guided by the Spirit of God. Paul could say that "all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God" (Romans 8:14), based on his realisation that "it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God" (Romans 8:16). He too was experiencing the hands of God that carried him. The words and work of Jesus Christ, who taught us to call God Father, continually work to become all our knowledge as Christians through the Holy Spirit, who has come in his name. 

In this way, I encountered God and was led to the Church. While I have learnt many things about the Bible, the teachings of the Church and its history, I began to feel difficulties when faced with the teachings expressed through the Christian culture that European history had nurtured and preserved. I was acutely aware that I had grown up in a culture with no Greek philosophy, no Barbarian Invasions, no encounter with Islamic culture and therefore no opportunity to come into contact with the teachings and traditions of the Church Fathers. 

For me, the teachings of the Church are the Japanese translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, promulgated as the Latin typical edition in 1997, and the Japanese-version catechism, The Teachings of the Catholic Church, published in 2003. In these documents, the description of devils and Satan, who were said to have originally been an angel, was a troubling issue. I suffered from a sense of contradiction in the commentary, which I could hardly accept.

Meanwhile, one day, I remembered the speech of Pope St John Paul II at Hiroshima when he visited Japan in 1981. It opened with the famous words: "War is the work of man". I focused my attention on the part 'the work of man'.

To be continued.

Maria K. M.