Note: This is part two 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 and Part 2.

We now know something about God, so it is worth asking something about ourselves. Why did God make us? Why did He create the world, and populate it with people, why did He create you? He did not create it because He needed something, since God is perfect and thus lacks nothing. If He did not make the world for His own sake, then He must have made it for some other reason: He created the world for its own sake, for our sake. He created it because of His love, and it was good (see Genesis 1:31).

If the world is for our sake, then what is our end—why did God create us? The Baltimore Catechism tells us that “God made me to know Him, to Love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to live happy with Him for ever in heaven.” We are made to know and love God, and we are made to serve Him, and we are made for happiness. We are made, in other words, to have a relationship with God. Saint Augustine famously expressed this in his Confessions when he wrote, “You have made us for yourself oh Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.”

Thus, God seeks us, and we seek God. We ultimately have three desires which trump all others, three highest things which our souls seek: the good, the true, and the beautiful. Yet as we have seen from the argument from aesthetics, all three of these things point back to one Ultimate Reality: God, Who is the source and summit of all three. Only in God do we find fully satisfied our heart’s longing to contemplate beauty, our intellect’s longing for truth, and our will’s longing for goodness; only in Him do we find our final and lasting happiness.

At the same time we find that God is seeking us, that He made us for love and that out of this same perfect love He has for us He seeks us. What do I mean by perfect love instead of merely “love”? In Greek there are four different words for love, and each of these loves means a different kind of love. There is estorge, which can be interpreted as affection, as between a man and his dog. Next comes filios, which is the love which a man has for his brothers, both literal and figurative, that is, for his close friends. Then there is eros, from which we get the word “erotic,” but which means the love which exists between a man and his wife or lover. In a way, all three of these loves are correct for what God has for us, affection as a Creator to His creatures and filios as shown by Christ for His brothers—all of us—and even eros as the divine Lover for his beloved (again us). These are what might be called the “natural loves”, and there is a final love which is greater still.

That is agape, the supernatural love which God ultimately has for us and which we have for Him, and even for each other. It is thus also referred to as “Christian love” because it was coined by the Christian writers of the New Testament, or “charity” (when it exists between men). This agape love is truly perfect, selfless, boundless. Agape may be summarized by a few passages from the Bible. “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 John 4:16). “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should…have eternal life” (John 3:16). “And Jesus answered him: The first commandment of all is, ‘Hear o Israel: the Lord thy God is one God. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with thy whole heart, and with they whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with they whole strength.’ This is the first commandment. And the second is like to it: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’ There is no greater commandment than these” (Mark 12:29-31, citing Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and Leviticus 19:18).

What God desires from us is a relationship with Him, and with each other. Faith is the relationship which we have with God, and also with His Church. The Catechism of the Catholic Church—a compendium of the Church’s teachings, which might be called an “owner’s guide” to the human soul—has this to say about Man’s response to God:
‘By his Revelation, “the invisible God, from the fullness of his love, addresses men as his friends, and moves among them, in order to invite and receive them into his own company.” The adequate response to this invitation is faith....Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed. As personal adherence to God and assent to his truth, Christian faith differs from our faith in any human person. It is right and just to entrust oneself wholly to God and to believe absolutely what he says. It would be futile and false to place such faith in a creature’ (paragraphs 142 and 150).

Faith is ultimately a human act, and yet paradoxically is a gift from God. It is a human act, because it is our response to God, and yet a gift because He must (and does) invite us to a relationship with Himself before we can respond to that invitation. It is an act both of the intellect and the will—to have a relationship to God means both to know Him and to love Him. Therefore, we will at times question our faith, or have the occasional doubts. These are the operations of the intellect. The Handbook for Today’s Catholic tells us that
A person seeking greater insight may sometimes have doubts, even about God himself. Such doubts do not necessarily indicate a lack of faith. In fact, they may be a sign of growing faith. Faith is alive and dynamic. It seeks, through grace, to penetrate into the very mystery of God. Faith is a living gift that must be nourished by the word of God. Even when inclined to reject a particular doctrine, the person should go right on seeking the revealed truth expressed by the doctrine. When in doubt, “Seek and you will find.” The person who seeks by reading, discussing, thinking, or praying eventually sees light. The person who talks to God even when God is “not there” is alive with faith.

All of us have had and will have times during which we question one or more things which the Church has taught, up to and even including about the nature and existence of God. Faith, acting through our will, allows us to give the Church—and God-the benefit of the doubt while we are doubting and questioning.

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Continue on to Part 4: "Faith and Doctrine, Relationship and Dogma"

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