When I was first asked to give a talk on “How I came to know the Lord”, I thought to myself, “Well, that’s going to be a short talk!” because the answer is summed up in a single word: Gradually.

My relationship with the Lord has developed over time very much like my relationship with my wife. My wife and I were introduced to each other by our families. From our first date to today, we have gradually grown closer to each other by spending increasing amounts of our time together, actively looking for opportunities to get together, and talking to each other to learn about each other.

After 30 years of marriage, we still put in the time to build our relationship. The parallels to how I came to know the Lord are just like how I came to know my wife.

I was “introduced” to God by my family because my parents were both life-long Catholics. As I got older, my experience has been a gradual growing closer to Him, by making an effort to bring God into my life - often by getting involved in a church or parish activity. In my university days, during Lent, I would attend daily Mass. As a young married man, I would volunteer with my parish’s Youth Group. As a parent, I helped teach children in our parish to prepare for Confirmation.

At that stage of my life, religion was one part of my life that orbited around me along with my family life, work life, hobbies, and so on. Getting involved with these church activities helped me make sure that the “religion part” of my life got an appropriate share of my time and focus.

Then, two other church activities helped to gradually let me grow even closer to the Lord. First, for a few years, I was involved with doing an enactment of the Passion on Good Friday where Jesus is arrested, questioned, tortured, crucified and dies. By studying that scripture over and over in order to memorize it for the enactment, I gained a deeper, more heart-felt appreciation for Jesus’ display, on the cross, of His love for me.

Second, I took a course offered here at the parish whose theme was moving God from being one of the things that orbit around me, to being at the centre of my life so that my family, work, hobbies etc. now revolve around me and the Lord. That message really resonated with me.

That brings me to today. In the last few years, I have gotten involved with activities that have helped me inch ever so closer to the Lord including RCIA, being a Lector at the 7p.m. Mass, and joining a Catholic group called Cursillo.

Cursillo has given me lots of opportunities to try to keep the Lord at the centre of my life despite the pressures and distractions that come up every day. One example: As part of Cursillo, I meet with three other people every Wednesday night and we discuss our week from a spiritual perspective, and we share ideas on how to grow closer to the Lord through prayer, study and action so that we can do what God wants us to do with our time on Earth.

To summarize, I haven’t grown closer to the Lord through one big event in my life. My experience has been that I’ve grown closer to Him, gradually, and over many years, by making the effort to build our relationship which, for me, has been enabled by my involvement in different parish activities and church groups. Just like with my wife, I still try to know the Lord better a bit more every day. It takes some effort on my part but God richly rewards me by my experiencing just a bit more profoundly the love He offers to us all.