Note: This is part five of a series of five posts about God. These were originally written as an RCIA presentation about God the Father. These posts are in an expanded form, and the presentation as given does not necessarily follow the posts exactly. I was constrained in the presentation itself to keep the time to under about 45 minutes or so, and to be somewhat conversational (sine it was their first formal session). Here is the full written transcript, which goes beyond what I did in the presentation. Here are Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

I want to conclude with a few instances of God’s revelation to us in the Scriptures. The definitive and complete revelation of God to us comes in the Person of the Son, of Jesus Christ—but that is the subject for another talk and another day. I want instead to look briefly at some passages in Scripture in which God reveals Himself to us.

The first pair of passages are from Exodus, in the Old Testament. In Exodus 3:13-15, God reveals His name to Moses:
Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO AM.” And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I Am has sent me to you.’ …this is my name for ever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.

God’s name is YHWH, which is “I AM WHO AM.” Later on, God also reveals to Moses His face—or, more accurately, His back—so that Deuteronomy concludes with a sense of sad longing at Moses’ death,
“And there arose no more prophet in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face: in all the signs and wonders which he sent by him, to do in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to the whole land: and all the mighty hand, and great miracles, which Moses did before Israel” (Deuteronomy 34:10-12).

Imagine for a moment that you are in a dimly lit room (see “through a glass darkly”) and a mysterious person speaks to you. He has a voice which you cannot quite recognize—perhaps it is “still” and “small” (1 Kings 19:11-13)—and He is telling you that he alone can satisfy your heart’s greatest desires. You want to know Who is speaking to you. You ask Him to identify Himself: what do you expect by way of reply?

There are two things which I might expect by way of identity: a name and a face. When I tell you my name or show you my face, I am revealing myself to you. This is at least as true of God, Whose name is uniquely His in that nobody else gave it to Him, and about Whose face the same could be said. His name is YHWH, and He Is the God Who Is. He is not like the other gods, the Baals and Astartes and Molochs, the Isis and Kalis, or even the Zeuses and Odins and Apollos and Thors; these latter pagan gods are more nearly described as persons with exceptional power and possibly greater knowledge, etc—but neither their power nor their knowledge is infinite, nor are they always good, and they are certainly not necessary (that is, they are contingent beings at best). YHWH alone Is, that is, His essence is His existence, and His existence is necessary. He is that which cannot not exist, the necessary Being of infinite power, infinite knowledge, and infinite goodness. The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that
“This divine name is mysterious just as God is mystery. It is at once a name revealed and something like the refusal of a name, and hence it better expresses God as what he is—infinitely above everything that we can understand or say: he is the ‘hidden God,’ his name is ineffable, and he is the God who makes himself close to men....God is unique; there are no other gods besides him. He transcends the world and history. He made the heaven and the earth....In God ‘there is no variation or shadow due to change.’ God is ‘He who Is,’ from everlasting to everlasting and as such remains ever faithful to himself and to his promises.

The revelation of the ineffable name ‘I am who Am’ contains the truth that God alone IS” (paragraphs 206, 212-213).

The various pagan gods all began to exist. Zeus, for example, was fathered by Cronus, who was in turn born to Cronus at some point in time. These gods began to exist, and so they were created—even within the mythos of the people who worshiped them as gods! They were not necessary beings, but rather came into existence; some of them perhaps also ceased to exist, as might be the case of the Norse gods following Ragnaroc; and even the Olmpian gods waged a war which they might have lost when they defeated the Titans, and again had they not found the hero Hercules to aide them against the giants. They were moreover neither all-powerful nor all-knowing, and many of them had unknown fates which were governed by others: again, the Norse gods were governed by the Norns, who were in turn not all-powerful save for this governing of fate, and the Olympian gods of the Greeks (and later Romans) were subject at times to the Fates. Finally, these gods were not necessarily good, and they all had some moral failing, as Thor with his temper or Zeus with his profligacy. Their influences and moral characters were often bad, as Saint Augustine labored to show in his City of God. Some were downright wicked, as the lust of the Phoenician/Carthaginian god Moloch for the blood of the infants was well-known by the Romans.

God—YHWH—alone Is. He alone Is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. He alone has an essence—that is, a nature—which is identical to existence, meaning that He alone cannot not exist. He does not have a fate which is governed by another, nor does he have moral failings like the false gods. So mighty and mysterious Is He that even Moses was never permitted to actually see His face, but rather only His “back,” only his power manifested through its effects in nature, as lightning and thunder, earthquakes and a cloud and a bush which was ablaze without being consumed.

Even Moses could not see God’s real “face.” For this we had to await the coming of Our LORD Jesus Christ, Who Is God. He is the Son who taught us to refer to His Father as “Our Father,” not merely as a Creator but as a Father Who loves us, Who moreover provides for us—“give us this day our daily bread”—and Who even “forgives us our trespasses.”

He is the perfect Father of whom earthly fathers are but images. Father Oscar Lukefahr tells us in “We Believe” that “God is Father. This does not mean that God is like human fathers, but that all good qualities in human parents come from God.” This is illustrated for us in man places in the Bible, but I want to look at just one, one of Jesus’ parables: the parable of the prodigal son, which might be more accurately named the parable of the loving Father.

Then he said, 'There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, "Father, let me have the share of the estate that will come to me." So the father divided the property between them. A few days later, the younger son got together everything he had and left for a distant country where he squandered his money on a life of debauchery. 'When he had spent it all, that country experienced a severe famine, and now he began to feel the pinch; so he hired himself out to one of the local inhabitants who put him on his farm to feed the pigs. And he would willingly have filled himself with the husks the pigs were eating but no one would let him have them. Then he came to his senses and said, "How many of my father's hired men have all the food they want and more, and here am I dying of hunger! I will leave this place and go to my father and say: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired men."

So he left the place and went back to his father. 'While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with pity. He ran to the boy, clasped him in his arms and kissed him. Then his son said, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son." But the father said to his servants, "Quick! Bring out the best robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the calf we have been fattening, and kill it; we will celebrate by having a feast, because this son of mine was dead and has come back to life; he was lost and is found." And they began to celebrate.

'Now the elder son was out in the fields, and on his way back, as he drew near the house, he could hear music and dancing. Calling one of the servants he asked what it was all about. The servant told him, "Your brother has come, and your father has killed the calf we had been fattening because he has got him back safe and sound." He was angry then and refused to go in, and his father came out and began to urge him to come in; but he retorted to his father, "All these years I have slaved for you and never once disobeyed any orders of yours, yet you never offered me so much as a kid for me to celebrate with my friends. But, for this son of yours, when he comes back after swallowing up your property -- he and his loose women -- you kill the calf we had been fattening." 'The father said, "My son, you are with me always and all I have is yours. But it was only right we should celebrate and rejoice, because your brother here was dead and has come to life; he was lost and is found." ' (Luke 15:11-32)

There's a lot to be learned form this parable, but I want to focus on the Father in particular. He has been insulted and treated as dead by the younger son, who demanded his inheritance—a thing not necessarily guaranteed to any but the oldest—who then left and spent it on cheap thrills. It then took poverty and a famine for that son to come back, and he did so then only because he remembered that his Father had plenty of resources with which he could provide for him. Sure he'd apologize, and he asked to be treated as a servant and not a son—but what material gains could he still make as son, even if all were forgiven?

How did the Father treat him upon his arrival home? He saw him coming from a long way off—I suspect this implies that after all this time, he was still watching, waiting, and hoping for the son's return—and ran to the boy. He didn't walk as if to preserve his dignity, nor wait did he wait patiently and indifferently for his son to return, but rather ran to him, moved with pity, yes, but again the implication is that there is more than pity at work here. Then he accepts his son back as a son and not only as a servant, and even gives him a robe and a ring—actually, the finest of both—to show that he is accorded the full honor of being a son, as if he had never left. He's totally forgiven, and the Father even throws a party to celebrate. I suppose this means that God has thrown a party for each one of us, and maybe a few.

What of the second son, the older son who never left? See the scorn with which he treats his brother. But see at the same time the scorn with which he treats his Father—he won't set foot in the house so long as that good-for-nothing younger son was in there. No! He makes his Father leave from the festivities to come outside to him—once again the Father is willing to meet him where he is to try and draw him inside to his home—and after the outburst of anger from the older son we hear only kindness in the Father's voice. He overlooks the older son's first objection: that the younger son asked for half of the possessions, thus in effect robbing the older son of those possessions—the implication being that the older son has himself only stuck around because of what he hopes to inherit. The Father overlooks this and invites the older son in, reminding him that he will receive all which the Father has, and that he is with him always.

We don't hear the reaction of the older son to the Father, though we do see that the younger son is able to accept the Father's forgiveness. The Father in this parable represents God, the Father, and He is willing to forgive us anything, if we will let Him. He is slow to anger and quick to kindness—witness how in the parable He does not lose His temper with either of the sons, but rather treats them with the utmost kindness. To some extent, we are all the younger son, and we have all strayed away from God. Yet He accepts us back not only as servants, but as sons, as His beloved children. When we ask Him for forgiveness, He does not meet out His wrath and judgment, but rather His mercy and kindness; it is His joy and His love as a Father—as the Father, the perfect Father—which greets us on our return.

And if all of this seems a bit overwhelming, then I would like to conclude with a word of encouragement from our greatest philosopher and theologian, Saint Thomas Aquinas. He tells us that "Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do."