Coming to know God

Over the last ten posts or so, we have been going over some deeper spiritual and theological realities that are in the Catholic tradition.  We have spoken about various virtues, sins, gifts, charisms, and fruits.   All these are realities of the moral and spiritual life that Catholics, and indeed all baptized Christians, should seek and strive for.  We also spoke of the beautiful, profound reality of the Real Presence of Our Lord in Holy Communion.

I thought for this post, we could step back, and look at something a little more basic that can apply to all people of good will, not just Christians.  It is the general reality of man's search for, and coming to know, God.  Before we can come to know God as Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), we need to be able to believe there even is a God, and that we can come to know Him.

The Catechism of the Catholic teaches some basic foundational principles in this regard:

1) Man is created by God, and for God.  God is our Creator, and at the same time, our ultimate end. This means we will not be happy until we come to know Him.
2) God can be known.   If we are made for God, He has to make himself available for us to know.
3) God can be known by natural reason via "converging and convincing arguments" (p.31)   There are logical reasons to believe in God.
4) The world around us points to the reality of God.   The order and beauty of it, as well as the philosophical principles of movement and becoming, can help lead us to know something of Him as the origin of the universe.
5) The interior of the human person also points to the reality of God.   We long for the infinite, for truth, beauty, goodness, and morality.  All this reveals that inside, we have something, usually referred to as a "soul", that comes from beyond us, and beyond this world, which is usually referred to as God.
6) Despite this, man does experience challenges coming to know God.   The senses, the imagination, and the human mind are limited and finite. Add the reality of sin to that, and it makes the human experience of coming to know God often challenging.
7) There is another source of knowledge of God besides human reason, and that is Divine Revelation.   "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." (p.50)   What God reveals in Revelation is not against nature or reason, but goes beyond both.  Only in Divine Revelation, can we, for example, discover the Holy Spirit, and His gifts and fruits, which we have spoken of.  We will speak more about Divine Revelation in future posts.

So, man yearns for God as his ultimate end, and can find Him via natural reason, and with the grace of Divine Revelation.  This is the basics of what the Church teaches about man and his quest for God.   She affirms man as a being who seeks happiness, and says, yes, man can find what he is looking for.  She calls out to all men and women, and tells us not give up in our quest for happiness.   Yes, the path She proposes is, in the words of Our Lord, "narrow" (Matthew 7:14).   There may be moments of suffering and discomfort on the way, but underneath that, there can be peace, joy, and in the end, eternal beautitude.   Let us all continue our search for God, in the world around us, in our inner beings, and in the message of Divine Revelation, as transmitted and interpreted by Holy Mother Church.

The road to finding God is sometimes hard, but it is worth it.  It requires, among other virtues, patience.  One of the titles in the litany to Saint Joseph is "mirror of patience".  This means when this noble virtue looks itself in the mirror, it sees Joseph.   Joseph had to be patient, to be able to absorb all that was being revealed to him as he raised the Son of God.  A man of less patience would not have been suitable to handle all this goodness.  Patience is good for us to practice, too, as God reveals Himself to us, in so much as we can handle it, a little each day. 

Joseph, mirror of patience, pray for us.