God knows each person and He wants to share his life with them. The Church has always encouraged Catholics to know God and to have a personal relationship with the One who created them in his own image and likeness.
A personal relationship with God is encouraged in writings of popes and Church fathers and profoundly demonstrated in how the saints lived their lives.
Vastly different than simply knowing details about God, Catholics should truly get to know Him and make Him part of their lives. This requires ongoing effort and commitment.
A personal relationship with God must be continually developed by reading about Him in Sacred Scripture, spending time with Him in prayer, and receiving his grace through the sacraments.
Catholics relate with Jesus in a most intimate way when they receive his Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Eucharist.
Devout Catholics express their personal relationship with God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in various ways and with different devotions.
Jesus is a person:
More than just knowing about Jesus:
“At the heart of catechesis we find, in essence, a Person, the Person of Jesus of Nazareth, the only Son from the Father. . .Who suffered and died for us and Who now, after rising, is living with us forever.” To catechize is “to reveal in the Person of Christ the whole of God’s eternal design reaching fulfilment in that Person. It is to seek to understand the meaning of Christ’s actions and words and of the signs worked by Him.” Catechesis aims at putting “people . . . in communion . . . with Jesus Christ: only He can lead us to the love of the Father in the Spirit and make us share in the life of the Holy Trinity.”
Catechism of the Catholic Church 426
Expressing closeness with God in many ways:
Relationship that is unique to Christianity:
Understanding Jesus to relate to Him:
“I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.”
John 15:15
Religion only works if it supports relationship:
Intimate relationships require time and effort:
We are only Christians if we encounter Christ. Of course, He does not show Himself to us in this overwhelming, luminous way, as He did to Paul to make him the Apostle to all peoples. But we too can encounter Christ in reading Sacred Scripture, in prayer, in the liturgical life of the Church. We can touch Christ’s heart and feel Him touching ours. Only in this personal relationship with Christ, only in this encounter with the Risen One do we truly become Christians.
Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience, 3 September 2008
Spending the day with the Lord:
Meeting God personally in prayer:
The Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of the Catholic Church
Joyful Ministry to Women in Crisis Pregnancies:
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