"God, Who are You?" - Part Three

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"For without the Creator the creature would disappear....
When God is forgotten... the creature itself grows unintelligible."
- Gaudium et Spes, Vatican II


It can get pretty dark when we stay inside our own heads and try to figure out why we're here and where we came from. These questions that we humans have, this seeking out the truth of our origins, it has to be a seeking that is beyond us, above us, bigger than just us. As cozy as it is sometimes to just stay inside, we have to go outside, beyond ourselves to see how Life came about, and where it's headed. And we have to go heedless of the consequences, for truth is the goal and there's no time to stay stuck in our own fabrications.

These questions are scary, beautiful, wonderful, and often disturbing. Inside every question is a quest.... an adventure that we are made to embark upon. This is the road that goes on and on, like the road Bilbo Baggins sang about at the beginning of his great adventure. (Isn't this so much more exciting than that stinkin' television!) We should treasure this question about Who God Is, and look at it closely. When we find Him, we find ourselves.


The question is not without an answer. And the answer is beyond our wildest dreams! It doesn't lie in some primordial pool (although we may have resided there at some point). The answer lies above us, for the Spirit in the beginning hovered over those primordial waters (see Genesis 1). For the animals, the answers, in a certain sense, stay stuck in the pool. That's why they don't stargaze. We received a divine infusion at a key moment in our history, and so we do stargaze, ponder, wonder and contemplate.

Now if we have the humility to simply "look up" (aka ponder, wonder, contemplate) then we can gain some serious headway into the answer to the deepest question about Who God Is. When we want to see something and it lies in the shadows, turning on the light is the logical move to make. So to understand ourselves better, wouldn't it make sense to step into the Light of the Creator?

And Who is it then that comes into focus when we lift up our heads to see? Here we need the help of Revelation to see the full picture. Creation and the human person can teach us much about the objective nature of God, what He is like.... but only God can tell us Who He really is; that's the subjective part. We can know there is a Great Power, a Towering Intellect, a Force behind all things, but what is God like on the inside? God only knows..... and so do those to whom He wishes to reveal Himself! And He has done this. WHOA! God has pulled back the veil! That's the meaning of the Latin word revelare!

So here it is.... and I love how subdued the Catechism of the Catholic Church can be. I would have tossed loads of superlatives, exclamation points, etc. But Mother Church almost whispers this Truth in hushed and reverent tones, like a mother to a child on the morning of his birthday. The fuse is lit in our study and our prayer and our searching, but the explosion of joy can only happen when our faith fans the spark and feeds the flame.

The Church reveals to us that, "God Himself is an eternal exchange of Love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and He has destined us to share in that exchange."

Whoa.... not an old man with a beard, a blind force, a tyrant with thunderbolts, a teacher with a red marking pen or a distant Impersonal Power?

Nope. And we know in our hearts that these are obstructions to the Truth we are made for.

God Himself is an eternal exchange of Love...
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit...
and He has destined us...
to share in that exchange.

I'm stopping here. The seed is laid down in the soil of the soul. When we truly hear what is revealed in this quotation, the time for words ceases.

The heart so shrouded in darkness finally breaks out of the earth and opens at last to the glory of the Son.

For this we were made.