7. God Approaches Us Men

YOUCAT Catechism + Catechism of the Catholic Church Lesson 7

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God Approaches Us Men

7.  Why did God have to show himself in order for us to be able to know what he is like? 

Man can know by reason that God exists, but not what God is really like.  Yet because God would very much like to be known, he has revealed himself.  [50-53, 68-69]

Jesus The Good Shepherd    “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so everyone who believes in him might have eternal life.” John 3:16 ….. 7

God did not have to reveal himself to us.  But he did it—out of love.  Just as in human love one can know something about the beloved person only if he opens his heart to us, so too we know something about God’s inmost thoughts only because the eternal and mysterious God has opened himself to us out of love.  From creation on, through the patriarchs and the prophets down to the definitive REVELATION in his Son Jesus Christ, God has spoken again and again to mankind.  In him he has poured out his heart to us and made his inmost being visible for us.

“Something incomprehensible is not for that reason less real.”  Blaise Pascal (1588-1651)

REVELATION:  Revelation means that God opens himself, shows himself, and speaks to the world voluntarily.

[50-53, 68-69]

GOD COMES TO MEET MAN

50 By natural reason man can know God with certainty, on the basis of his works. But there is another order of knowledge, which man cannot possibly arrive at by his own powers: the order of divine Revelation.(Compare Dei Filius:Denzinger-Schönmetzer 3015.)¹ Through an utterly free decision, God has revealed himself and given himself to man. This he does by revealing the mystery, his plan of loving goodness, formed from all eternity in Christ, for the benefit of all men. God has fully revealed this plan by sending us his beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. --Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition

GOD REVEALS HIS "PLAN OF LOVING GOODNESS"

51 "It pleased God, in his goodness and wisdom, to reveal himself and to make known the mystery of his will. His will was that men should have access to the Father, through Christ, the Word made flesh, in the Holy Spirit, and thus become sharers in the divine nature (Dei Verbum 2; Compare Ephesians 1:9; Eph 2:18; 2 Peter 1:4.)."² –CCC

52 God, who "dwells in unapproachable light", wants to communicate his own divine life to the men he freely created, in order to adopt them as his sons in his only-begotten Son.(1 Timothy 6:16, Compare Ephesians 1:4-5.)³ By revealing himself God wishes to make them capable of responding to him, and of knowing him and of loving him far beyond their own natural capacity. –CCC

53 The divine plan of Revelation is realized simultaneously "by deeds and words which are intrinsically bound up with each other"(Dei Verbum 2.)⁴   and shed light on each another. It involves a specific divine pedagogy: God communicates himself to man gradually. He prepares him to welcome by stages the supernatural Revelation that is to culminate in the person and mission of the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ. --CCC

St. Irenaeus of Lyons repeatedly speaks of this divine pedagogy using the image of God and man becoming accustomed to one another: The Word of God dwelt in man and became the Son of man in order to accustom man to perceive God and to accustom God to dwell in man, according to the Father's pleasure.(St. Irenaeus, Adv. haeres. 3,20,2:Patrologia Graeca 7/1,944; Compare 3,17,1; 4,12,4; 4,21,3.)⁵ --CCC

IN BRIEF

68 By love, God has revealed himself and given himself to man. He has thus provided the definitive, superabundant answer to the questions that man asks himself about the meaning and purpose of his life. –CCC

69 God has revealed himself to man by gradually communicating his own mystery in deeds and in words. --CCC

6. "....from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator"

YOUCAT Catechism + Catechism of the Catholic Church Lesson 6

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6.  Can we grasp God at all in concepts?  Is it possible to speak about him meaningfully?

Although we men are limited and the infinite greatness of God never fits into finite human concepts, we can nevertheless speak rightly about God.  [39-43, 48]

Transfiguration by Carl Heinrich Bloch 1834-1890. …..6

In order to express something about God, we use imperfect images and limited notions.  And so everything we say about God is subject to the reservation that our language is not equal to God’s greatness.  Therefore we must constantly purify and improve our speech about God.

“Man’s unique grandeur is ultimately based on his capacity to know the truth.  And human beings desire to know the truth.  Yet truth can only be obtained in freedom.  This is the case with all truth, as is clear from the history of science; but it is eminently the case with those truths in which man himself, man as such, is at stake, the truths of the spirit, the truths about good and evil, about the great goals and horizons of life, about our relationship with God.  These truths cannot be attained without profound consequences for the way we live our lives.”  Pope Benedict XVI, January 9, 2006

[39-43, 48]

IV.  HOW CAN WE SPEAK ABOUT GOD?

39 In defending the ability of human reason to know God, the Church is expressing her confidence in the possibility of speaking about him to all men and with all men, and therefore of dialogue with other religions, with philosophy and science, as well as with unbelievers and atheists. --Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition

40 Since our knowledge of God is limited, our language about him is equally so. We can name God only by taking creatures as our starting point, and in accordance with our limited human ways of knowing and thinking. –CCC

41 All creatures bear a certain resemblance to God, most especially man, created in the image and likeness of God. The manifold perfections of creatures - their truth, their goodness, their beauty all reflect the infinite perfection of God. Consequently we can name God by taking his creatures" perfections as our starting point, "for from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator". (Wisdom 13:5.) ¹⁵  --CCC

42 God transcends all creatures. We must therefore continually purify our language of everything in it that is limited, image-bound or imperfect, if we are not to confuse our image of God--"the inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable"--with our human representations.(Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Anaphora.)¹⁶    Our human words always fall short of the mystery of God. –CCC

43 Admittedly, in speaking about God like this, our language is using human modes of expression; nevertheless it really does attain to God himself, though unable to express him in his infinite simplicity. Likewise, we must recall that "between Creator and creature no similitude can be expressed without implying an even greater dissimilitude";(Lateran Council IV:Denzinger-Schönmetzer 806.)¹⁷ and that "concerning God, we cannot grasp what he is, but only what he is not, and how other beings stand in relation to him." –CCC

IN BRIEF

48 We really can name God, starting from the manifold perfections of his creatures, which are likenesses of the infinitely perfect God, even if our limited language cannot exhaust the mystery. –CCC

5. The difficulty in knowing God by reason

The difficulty in knowing God by reason

YOUCAT Catechism + Catechism of the Catholic Church Lesson 5

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5.  Why do people deny that God exists, if they can know him by reason?

To know the invisible God is a great challenge for the human mind.  Many are scared off by it.  Another reason why some do not want to know God is because they would then have to change their life.  Anyone who says that the question about God is meaningless because it cannot be answered is making things too easy for himself.  [37-38]  357

The baptism of Jesus, with the Holy Spirit descending from Heaven as a dove by Trevisani.   By the grace of God, John, the baptizer, was able to recognize his God in Jesus. (compare Matthew 3:13-17). …..5

“So it happens that men in such matters easily persuade themselves that what they would not like to be true is false, or at least doubtful.”  Pope Pius XII Encyclical, Humani generis.

[37-38] 

THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD ACCORDING TO THE CHURCH

37 In the historical conditions in which he finds himself, however, man experiences many difficulties in coming to know God by the light of reason alone: --Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition

Though human reason is, strictly speaking, truly capable by its own natural power and light of attaining to a true and certain knowledge of the one personal God, who watches over and controls the world by his providence, and of the natural law written in our hearts by the Creator; yet there are many obstacles which prevent reason from the effective and fruitful use of this inborn faculty. For the truths that concern the relations between God and man wholly transcend the visible order of things, and, if they are translated into human action and influence it, they call for self-surrender and abnegation. The human mind, in its turn, is hampered in the attaining of such truths, not only by the impact of the senses and the imagination, but also by disordered appetites which are the consequences of original sin. So it happens that men in such matters easily persuade themselves that what they would not like to be true is false or at least doubtful (Pius XII, Humani Generis, 561:Denzinger-Schönmetzer 3875.) .¹³ –CCC

38 This is why man stands in need of being enlightened by God's revelation, not only about those things that exceed his understanding, but also "about those religious and moral truths which of themselves are not beyond the grasp of human reason, so that even in the present condition of the human race, they can be known by all men with ease, with firm certainty and with no admixture of error (Pius XII, Humani generis, 561:Denzinger-Schönmetzer 3876; compare Dei Filius 2:DS 3005; Dei Verbum 6; St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I,1,1.)¹⁴ --CCC

Second Sunday of Lent, February 25, 2018

The Franciscan Church of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor in Israel.

Second Sunday of Lent, February 25, 2018
Lectionary: 26

Reading 1   Genesis 22:1-2, 9A, 10-13, 15-18

God put Abraham to the test.  He called to him, "Abraham!"  "Here I am!" he replied.  Then God said:
"Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah.  There you shall offer him up as a holocaust on a height that I will point out to you."

When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it.  Then he reached out and took the knife to slaughter his son.  But the LORD's messenger called to him from heaven, "Abraham, Abraham!"  "Here I am!" he answered.  "Do not lay your hand on the boy," said the messenger.  "Do not do the least thing to him.  I know now how devoted you are to God, 
since you did not withhold from me your own beloved son."  As Abraham looked about, he spied a ram caught by its horns in the thicket.  So he went and took the ram and offered it up as a holocaust in place of his son.

Again the LORD's messenger called to Abraham from heaven and said: "I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you acted as you did in not withholding from me your beloved son, I will bless you abundantly and make your descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore; 
your descendants shall take possession of the gates of their enemies, and in your descendants all the nations of the earth shall find blessing— all this because you obeyed my command."

Responsorial Psalm  PSalm 116:10, 15, 16-17, 18-19

R. (116:9) I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.

I believed, even when I said,
"I am greatly afflicted."
Precious in the eyes of the LORD
is the death of his faithful ones.

R. I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.

O LORD, I am your servant;
I am your servant, the son of your handmaid;
you have loosed my bonds.
To you will I offer sacrifice of thanksgiving,
and I will call upon the name of the LORD.

R. I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.

My vows to the LORD I will pay
in the presence of all his people,
In the courts of the house of the LORD,
in your midst, O Jerusalem.

R. I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.

Reading 2   ROMans 8:31B-34

Brothers and sisters:  If God is for us, who can be against us?  He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?

Who will bring a charge against God's chosen ones?  It is God who acquits us, who will condemn?
Christ Jesus it is who died—or, rather, was raised— who also is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.

Verse Before The Gospel   Compare MaTthew 17:5

From the shining cloud the Father's voice is heard:

This is my beloved Son, listen to him.

Gospel   MarK 9:2-10

Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves.  And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no fuller on earth could bleach them.  Then Elijah appeared to them along with Moses,  and they were conversing with Jesus.  Then Peter said to Jesus in reply, "Rabbi, it is good that we are here!  Let us make three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."  He hardly knew what to say, they were so terrified.  Then a cloud came, casting a shadow over them; from the cloud came a voice, "This is my beloved Son. Listen to him."

Suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone but Jesus alone with them.

As they were coming down from the mountain, he charged them not to relate what they had seen to anyone, except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead.  So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what rising from the dead meant.

4. Ways of coming to know God

Ways of coming to know God

YOUCAT Catechism + Catechism of the Catholic Church Lesson 4

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4.  Can we know the existence of God by our reason?

Yes.  Human reason can know God with certainty.  [31-36, 44-47]

On my first visit to the Grand Canyon (1966) I hiked the North Rim Trail down some 4,000 feet to Roaring Springs.  The downward trek brought successively older stratified rock layers with fossilized life forms that had lived in eons past….. processes that unfolded over unimaginable time in God’s creation. --Photo by US Dept. Interior, Caters News …..4

The world cannot have its origin and destination within itself.  In everything that exists, there is more than we see.  The order, the beauty, and the development of the world point beyond themselves toward God.  Every man is receptive to what is true, good, and beautiful.  He hears within himself the voice of conscience, which urges him to what is good and warns him against what is evil.  Anyone who follows this path reasonably finds God.

They (men) should seek God, in the hope that they might feel after him and find him.  Yet he is not far from each one of us, for “In him we live and move and have our being.”  (Acts of the Apostles 17:27-28a)

[31-36, 44-47]

WAYS OF COMING TO KNOW GOD

31 Created in God's image and called to know and love him, the person who seeks God discovers certain ways of coming to know him. These are also called proofs for the existence of God, not in the sense of proofs in the natural sciences, but rather in the sense of "converging and convincing arguments", which allow us to attain certainty about the truth. These "ways" of approaching God from creation have a twofold point of departure: the physical WORLD, and the HUMAN  PERSON. --Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition

32  The WORLD: starting from movement, becoming, contingency, and the world's order and beauty, one can come to a knowledge of God as the origin and the end of the universe. --CCC

As St. Paul says of the Gentiles: For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made (Romans 1:19-20; compare Acts of the Apostles 14:15,17; Acts 17:27-28; Wisdom 13:1-9.).⁷ --CCC

And St. Augustine issues this challenge: “Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air distending and diffusing itself, question the beauty of the sky. . . question all these realities. All respond: "See, we are beautiful." Their beauty is a profession [confessio]. These beauties are subject to change. Who made them if not the Beautiful One [Pulcher] who is not subject to change? (St. Augustine, Sermo 241, 2:Patrologia Latina 38,1134. )⁸ --CCC

33 The HUMAN PERSON: with his openness to truth and beauty, his sense of moral goodness, his freedom and the voice of his conscience, with his longings for the infinite and for happiness, man questions himself about God's existence. In all this he discerns signs of his spiritual soul. The soul, the "seed of eternity we bear in ourselves, irreducible to the merely material can have its origin only in God. (Gaudium et Spes 18 § 1; compare 14 § 2.)",⁹ –-CCC  

   

34 The world, and man, attest that they contain within themselves neither their first principle nor their final end, but rather that they participate in Being itself, which alone is without origin or end. Thus, in different ways, man can come to know that there exists a reality which is the first cause and final end of all things, a reality "that everyone calls God".(St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I,2,3)^{10 --CCC}

35 Man's faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal God. But for man to be able to enter into real intimacy with him, God willed both to reveal himself to man and to give him the grace of being able to welcome this revelation in faith. The proofs of God's existence, however, can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason.—CCC

THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD ACCORDING TO THE CHURCH

36 "Our holy mother, the Church, holds and teaches that God, the first principle and last end of all things, can be known with certainty from the created world by the natural light of human reason."(Vatican Council I, Dei Filius 2:Denzinger-Schönmetzer 3004; compare DS 3026; Vatican Council II, Dei Verbum 6)¹¹ Without this capacity, man would not be able to welcome God's revelation. Man has this capacity because he is created "in the image of God".(compare Genesis 1:27.)¹² --CCC

IN BRIEF

44 Man is by nature and vocation a religious being. Coming from God, going toward God, man lives a fully human life only if he freely lives by his bond with God. –CCC

45 Man is made to live in communion with God in whom he finds happiness: When I am completely united to you, there will be no more sorrow or trials; entirely full of you, my life will be complete (St. Augustine, Conf. 10, 28, 39: Patrologia Latina 32, 795). --CCC

46 When he listens to the message of creation and to the voice of conscience, man can arrive at certainty about the existence of God, the cause and the end of everything. --CCC

47 The Church teaches that the one true God, our Creator and Lord, can be known with certainty from his works, by the natural light of human reason (compare Vatican Council I, can. 2 § 1: Denzinger-Schönmetzer 3026). --CCC

3 Man is receptive to God

YOUCAT catechism + Catechism of the Catholic Church  Lesson 3

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Chapter 1:  Man Is Receptive to God

3.  Why do we seek God?

God has placed in our hearts a longing to seek and find him.  St. Augustine says, “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”  We call this longing for God RELIGION.  [27-30]

The birth of Jesus. …..3

It is natural for man to seek God.  All of our striving for truth and happiness is ultimately a search for the one who supports us absolutely, satisfies us absolutely, and employs us absolutely in his service.  A person is not completely himself until he has found God.  “Anyone who seeks truth seeks God, whether or not he realizes it.” (St. Edith Stein).  [5, 281-285]

“The measure of love is love without measure.”  St Francis of Sales  (1567-1622, distinguished bishop, brilliant spiritual guide, founder of a religious community and Doctor of the Church)

Religion.  We can understand religion generally to mean a relationship to what is divine.  A religious person acknowledges something divine as the power that created him and the world, on which he is dependent and to which he is ordered.  He wants to please and honor the Divinity by his way of life.

“The noblest power of man is reason.  The highest goal of reason is the knowledge of God.”  St. Albert the Great (ca. 1200-1289, Dominican priest, scientist, and scholar, Doctor of the Church, and one of the greatest theologians of the Church.)

[27-30]

MAN’S CAPACITY FOR GOD

FOR THE DESIRE FOR GOD

27 The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for: -- Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition

The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion with God. This invitation to converse with God is addressed to man as soon as he comes into being. For if man exists it is because God has created him through love, and through love continues to hold him in existence. He cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and entrusts himself to his creator.( Vatican Council II, Gaudium et Spes 19 § 1.)¹ –CCC

28 In many ways, throughout history down to the present day, men have given expression to their quest for God in their religious beliefs and behavior: in their prayers, sacrifices, rituals, meditations, and so forth. These forms of religious expression, despite the ambiguities they often bring with them, are so universal that one may well call man a religious being: --CCC

From one ancestor [God] made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him - though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For "in him we live and move and have our being."(Acts of the Apostles 17:26-28.)² --CCC

29 But this "intimate and vital bond of man to God" (Gaudium et Spes 19 § 1) can be forgotten, overlooked, or even explicitly rejected by man.(Gaudium et Spes 19 § 1.)³ Such attitudes can have different causes: revolt against evil in the world; religious ignorance or indifference; the cares and riches of this world; the scandal of bad example on the part of believers; currents of thought hostile to religion; finally, that attitude of sinful man which makes him hide from God out of fear and flee his call (Compare Gaudium et Spes 19-21; Matthew 13:22; Genesis 3:8-10; John 1:3.)⁴ --CCC

30 "Let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice."(Psalm 105:3.)⁵    Although man can forget God or reject him, He never ceases to call every man to seek him, so as to find life and happiness. But this search for God demands of man every effort of intellect, a sound will, "an upright heart", as well as the witness of others who teach him to seek God. --CCC

You are great, O Lord, and greatly to be praised: great is your power and your wisdom is without measure. And man, so small a part of your creation, wants to praise you: this man, though clothed with mortality and bearing the evidence of sin and the proof that you withstand the proud. Despite everything, man, though but a small a part of your creation, wants to praise you. You yourself encourage him to delight in your praise, for you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.(St. Augustine, Conf. 1,1,1:Patrologia Latina 32,659-661.)⁶  --CCC