Since I believe that the call to holiness is a call to a genuine relationship with God, I have been sharing thoughts about how to establish genuine and real relationships with other humans. I truly believe that we cannot have a real relationship with God if we haven’t developed the ability to have genuine and real relationships with others you cannot really have a relationship with God Who you cannot see. I think one of the profound revelations that Jesus made to us is that the way we come to love God is by first learning how to love our neighbors and, of course, ourselves.

Another skill that is extremely important is empathy. There is a great expression that which expresses this: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Empathy and understanding builds connection between people. It is a state of perceiving and relating to another person’s feelings and needs without blaming, giving advice, or trying to fix the situation. Empathy also means “reading” another person’s inner state and interpreting it in a way that will help the other person and offer support and develop mutual trust. Empathy is the experience of understanding another person’s condition from their personal perspective. You place yourself in their shoes and feel what they are feeling. Empathy is known to increase prosocial (helping) behaviors. While American culture might be socializing people into becoming more individualistic rather than empathic, research has uncovered the existence of “mirror neurons,” which react to emotions expressed by others and then reproduce them.

I’m wondering whether my readers have thought about how these various skills can help them to develop a real and genuine relationship with God. I’ll be attempting to give my ideas on how I feel that they can help us in the next coming issues. If we know how to related to others, we can relate to God.