7. God Approaches Us Men

YOUCAT Catechism + Catechism of the Catholic Church Lesson 7

AVE MARIA Series

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