Feb 19 Wed
Does God Exist?
We cannot know God in His essence. He is beyond us and is unfathomable. But we can know God by seeing His actions in our lives, and in the world. Look at His attributes. Look at His works. Look at what He has done in your life, and in the lives of others. He is Omnipotent, All-Knowing, All-Loving, and bestows all that is good in superabundance.
Knowing that we can never fully comprehend the perfection of God is the first step in coming to know Him more intimately. Humble yourself, this day, before the great mystery of our God, and let His untouchable nature touch you in your heart.
God revealed his name to his people, Israel. A person’s name expresses his essence, identity, and sense of his life. God has a Name. He is not merely “an anonymous force.”
“Then 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 I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”
He is faithful and compassionate; He remembers his people and promises; He comes to liberate his people from slavery. Since God is almighty and loves his people beyond space and time, He will use all his might for this purpose.
According to Card. Sarah, there is a crisis of faith in today’s world and it is now at “the deepest and most crucial” point. But it is man, and not God who has “died” in the West: “The West is experiencing a profound identity crisis in which man, in his truth and beauty, seems no longer to be aware of his dignity and his vocation to happiness, to the fulfillment of his personal being.”
The cardinal also noted that “it is obvious that all this has remote roots, starting from the substitution of the Augustinian ‘Amo ergo sum’ (‘I love, therefore I am’) with the Cartesian ‘Cogito ergo sum’ (‘I think, therefore I am’), thus depriving man of that healthy relationship with reality on which the knowledge of one’s being, is founded.”
“The crucial point is fidelity, over time, to the task that God has assigned to us. In an increasingly hostile cultural context, with the fragmentation of relationships, which does not allow us to perceive the support and warmth of a believing community, it is increasingly difficult to live the radical nature of the Gospel.”
Regarding those who leave the Catholic Church, the African cardinal lamented that “those who leave are always making a mistake. They are making a mistake because they abandon their Mother, and they commit a dangerous act of pride, setting themselves up as judges of the Church.”
“Sometimes not everything is immediately understandable, and some things may seem completely inappropriate, some not adequately considered, even some pastorally unfounded or harmful; despite all this, this does not authorize them to leave.”
Talk to God in your prayer; tell Him: Lord, You and Your ways are beyond me. Yet in the mystery of Your divine presence, I come to know You. Help me Lord, as I ponder Your divine essence, to be drawn into a deeper love of You. Jesus, I trust in You.
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