By JOHN YOUNG
Creation is so wonderful that it would seem unbelievable if we didn’t actually experience it. But we usually don’t see the wonder, partly because we are so accustomed to it.
Why does anything exist rather than nothing? Looking at the things of our experience we see that they didn’t have to exist, and might well not have existed: That is, they are contingent, dependent on other things for their being.
But reality can’t be made up entirely of things that depend on other things for their existence. Reason tells us that there must be a being different from all the things we experience because it must be a necessary being: One that cannot not exist.
This is St. Thomas Aquinas’ Third Way of proving the existence of God. And it shows that all things, ourselves included, are utterly dependent on the Divine Will for their existence. This is something most people rarely if ever think of, but if we do we come to appreciate better our relationship with God.
His Will alone holds us in being. So when we sin we are acting against that Divine Will which alone keeps us in existence. As Frank Sheed says, this may not stop us from sinning, but if we sin it’s better to feel foolish while doing so!
St. Paul, speaking to the Athenians, approvingly quotes a pagan sage: “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
At the burning bush God told Moses: “I Am who Am” (Exodus 3:14). And He directed him to say to the Israelites: “He Who Is has sent me.
God is Infinite Being, existing without a cause (for He is the Supreme Cause), and holding all things in existence. If He forgot about us — which of course He can’t — we would simply cease to exist.
Another startling fact is the almost incredible truth that I exist. Body and soul are meant for each other: This body requires this soul. So if a conception took place at a different time another embryo would be involved, and therefore a different soul would be created by God. So for me to exist it was necessary that I have a certain mother and father and that they should conceive at a particular time.
That means all my ancestors back to Adam and Eve had to be as they were. That’s really mind-boggling but it’s true.
Another startling fact is the almost unbelievable complexity of the material world. Even a single molecule is so complex, with each part doing its proper job, that scientists are still unraveling its mystery. Extend this to the whole universe and we get some faint idea of the almost incredible order of the world.
Even more astounding is the supernatural relationship between God and ourselves. Reason can show, and Revelation confirms, that the human soul is immortal of its very nature. My soul can never cease to exist. But God has not left us with a merely natural destiny. He wants us to see Him face-to-face in Heaven.
For this to be possible we had to be raised to a new level of being through the infusion of sanctifying grace into our souls. That grace is a supernatural quality which makes us Godlike.
As St. Peter says: “We have been made partakers of the Divine Nature” (2 Peter 1:4); and St. John says: “To as many as believed He gave the power to become children of God” (John 1:12). Fathers of the Church have expressed it with stark clarity: “God became man that men might become God.”
If we could see into the soul of a person in a state of sanctifying grace we would be overwhelmed by the splendor of that soul, and the shock would be so great that I suppose we would die.
The purpose of this transformation is to make us fit to see God face to face in Heaven. In the present life all our higher knowledge comes through sense knowledge: through the five senses. But these give us only a superficial knowledge of material things. If we were able to have a direct intellectual knowledge, an intuitive knowledge, of even a flower or any material thing, we would be entranced by that vision.
But our destiny, if we don’t lose it by unrepented mortal sin, is to see the Blessed Trinity face-to-face, to love God totally, and to experience inexpressible happiness for all eternity.
When Adam and Eve sinned they lost the grace with which they had been endowed: lost it not for themselves only but for the whole human race. Then God did an amazing thing. He became man and died an agonizing death on the cross to merit grace and salvation for us.
We have become accustomed to the statement that God died for us, so we miss the wonder of that reality, and we are half-hearted in thanking Jesus for what He did. If we fully appreciated it we would never sin.
Another wonder that we fail to appreciate is the Mass. Every Catholic with a sound knowledge of the faith knows that each Mass makes Calvary present and that at the consecration our Lord’s real Body and Blood together with His Soul and Divinity become present under the appearances of bread and wine.
But here again our perception is dull. We fail to see the wonder of the Real Presence. We failed to see that Jesus is as really present in us at Holy Communion as He is in Heaven, and as He was in Galilee two thousand years ago.
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