After a long night of healing, Jesus gets up before dawn and goes alone to pray in today’s Gospel at Mass. Eventually his disciples find him and tell him, “Everyone is for you.”

It’s not surprising that everyone was looking for Jesus, even early in His ministry. The rumors and the newness of what He was doing had to be thrilling.

The question is: why were these people looking for Him? Would they stick around when He proved to put spiritual healing, salvation, and the forgiveness of sins above temporal necessities and desires, such as physical healings and throwing off the oppression of the Romans?

Today it is worth asking whether we follow Jesus’s example of private, deep, daily prayer. Whether we come to Him daily, and if so, why that is. Remember from not long ago, the first thing Jesus asks the disciples of John the Baptists in John’s Gospel, when they come to Him, is “What do you seek?”

Fr. Mike Schmitz has a wonderful presentation where talks about the four ‘T’s that God is not.

God is not our talisman, to magically work our will and give us good things we think we want or deserve.

God is not our toy, to be taken out and played with when we feel like it and ignored when we do not.

God is not our therapist. He is not there to make us “feel good” about ourselves, our lives, or the world. His concern is to make us his holy children, safe with Him for all eternity.

God is not our twin. His ways and thoughts are not ours. His priorities and desires are not ours.

It is easy to fall into the trap of creating a false god who functions as our talisman, toy, therapist, or twin. It is a deep and natural temptation, and it is worth honestly asking ourselves which of these we are most prone to wish God were, and to check ourselves.

Jesus reveals that God is our loving Father, after all. A father gives His children what they NEED. He cares about their (spiritual, in this case) safety rather than their frivolous wants and sometimes will even allow them to suffer pain when it is for their good, such as a necessary, life-saving surgery. He is wiser than they, acting in ways the child does not understand, and He is always the one in control and the one with authority.

If our image of God does not align with these realities of God’s identity as Father, then something is off.