Day 4: Our Capacity for God (2025)

You guys yesterday we had the introduction of part one. We got done with our syllabus days. We got done with that day one and two, the prologue of paragraphs one through twenty-five. Today we're starting paragraphs twenty-six through thirty-five. FYI. I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the Foundations of Faith approach. If you can follow along with that one, that's great. But you can use any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Also

If you want to download your own catechism in a year reading plan, you can visit Ascension Press.com slash CIY. And lastly, you can click follow or subscribe in whatever podcast you're listening for daily notifications and updates.

As I said, this is day four. We're reading from part one, what we believe, section one, divine revelation, and then here's chapter one on the search, paragraphs twenty-six through thirty-five. And this very beginning is about man's capacity, human beings' capacity for God. Now, one of the things you're gonna hear me say in when I'm reading from the catechism is man, and you've probably figured this out already, but

Man is the classic I mean in the English language, man simply means humanity and does not refer to male or female. Just that's Does that make sense? I just I wanna get it out there because today we're gonna talk about this like man's desire, the human heart, man is created by God and for God, and God never ceases to draw man to himself. What that means is you, regardless of whether you're male or female, just human beings. So I just want to say that right out out here.

In these first few paragraphs, paragraph 26 through 35, we're gonna hear about this. We're gonna hear about the desire for God that's written in the human heart and in all the ways in which We are, in many ways you could say, a religious being. That what human beings are are religious beings. That that at the very heart of who we are, we're never happy. We're never fulfilled until we encounter God, because we're made by God and made for God.

And so we only can actually find our identity in God. And then so God reveals himself to us.

And in paragraphs thirty-one to thirty-five, it talks about ways of coming to know God. And some of the ways are through the world around us. We can look at the world around us and we can discover that God is real and God exists by just looking at the world. We also The other way that the catechism highlights in these first paragraphs is Is through ourselves, through the human person, that um actually our own heart, our own experience, our own minds reveal that.

God exists. And so we have both the desire for God as well as a ways of coming to know God. That's what we're going to talk about today in paragraphs 26 to 35. Before we launch in, let's say a prayer. Father in heaven, oh my gosh, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. Inflame that desire that we have to know you. Inflame the desire that we have to be found by you.

and inflame that desire that we have to find you. You reveal your heart to us. Help us to reveal our hearts to you. Help us not be numb to the reality that you are. And help us not to be numb to the reality that you are love. We make this prayer in the mighty name of Jesus Christ our Lord, name the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. As I said, we are reading today paragraphs twenty-six through thirty-five in that part one, the profession of faith.

We begin our profession of faith by saying, I believe, or we believe. Before expounding the church's faith as confessed in the Creed, celebrated in the liturgy, and live in observance of God's commandments and in prayer, we must first ask what to believe means. Faith is man's response to God, who reveals himself and gives himself to man, at the same time bringing man a superabundant light as he searches for the ultimate meaning of his life.

Thus we shall consider first that search in chapter one, then the divine revelation by which God comes to meet man in chapter two, and finally the response of faith in chapter three.

CHAPTER one MAN's Capacity for God The Desire for God The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God, and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for. As the Second Vatican Council states that The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion with God. This invitation to converse with God is addressed to man as soon as he comes into being.

For if man exists, it is because God has created him through love, and through love continues to hold him in existence. He cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and entrusts himself to his creator. In many ways, throughout history down to the present day, men have given expression to their quest for God in their religious beliefs and behavior in their prayers, sacrifices, rituals, meditations, and so forth.

These forms of religious expression, despite the ambiguities they often bring with them, are so universal that one may well call man a religious being. As Saint Paul said in the Acts of the Apostles, the From one ancestor, God made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him, though indeed he is not far off from each one of us.

For in him we live and move and have our being. But this intimate and vital bond of man to God can be forgotten, overlooked, or even explicitly rejected by man. Such attitudes can have different causes revolt against evil in the world, religious ignorance or indifference, the cares and riches of this world, the scandal of bad example on the part of believers.

Currents of thought hostile to religion, finally, that attitude of sinful man which makes him hide from God out of fear and flee his call. Psalm one hundred five states Let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice. Although man can forget God or reject him, God never ceases to call every man to seek him so as to find life and happiness.

But this search for God demands of man every effort of intellect, a sound will, an upright heart, as well as the witness of others who teach him to seek God. Saint Augustine once wrote, You are great, O Lord, and greatly to be praised. Great is your power and your wisdom is without measure. And man, so small a part of your creation, wants to praise you. This man, though clothed with mortality and bearing the evidence of sin and the proof that you withstand the proud,

Despite everything, man, though but a small part of your creation, wants to praise you. You yourself encourage him to delight in your praise, for you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.

Ways of coming to know God Created in God's image and called to know and love him, the person who seeks God discovers certain ways of coming to know him. These are also called proofs for the existence of God, not in the sense of proofs in the natural sciences, but rather in the sense of converging and convincing arguments, which allow us to attain certainty about the truth. These ways of approaching God from creation have a twofold point of departure the physical world and the human person.

The world, starting from movement, becoming, contingency, and the world's order and beauty, one can come to a knowledge of God as the origin and end of the universe. As Saint Paul says of the Gentiles. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible nature, namely his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. And Saint Augustine issues this challenge.

Question the beauty of the earth. Question the beauty of the sea. Question the beauty of the air distending and diffusing itself. Question the beauty of the sky. Question all these realities. All respond, see, we are beautiful. Their beauty is a profession. These beauties are subject to change. Who made them, if not the beautiful one, who is not subject to change?

The human person, with his openness to truth and beauty, his sense of moral goodness, his freedom and the voice of his conscience, with his longings for the infinite and for happiness, man questions himself about God's existence. In all this, he discerns signs of his spiritual soul. The soul, the seed of eternity we bear in ourselves, irreducible to the merely material, can have its origin only in God.

The world and man attest that they contain within themselves neither their first principle nor their final end, but rather they participate in being itself which alone is without origin or end. Thus, in different ways, man can come to know that there exists a reality which is the first cause and final end of all things, a reality that everyone calls God.

Man's faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal God But for man to be able to enter into real intimacy with him, God willed both to reveal himself to man and to give him the grace of being able to welcome this revelation in faith. The proofs of God's existence, however, can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason.

Okay, guys, so here we are, day four. Uh here we are, part one what we believe, section one, divine revelation, and chapter one on the search.

And at the beginning, paragraph twenty six, which is actually before, technically, before chapter one, it's kind of a little teaser where it says that we're gonna look at these three chapters. Chapter one, Consider the search for God, then divine revelation by which God comes to meet us, chapter two, and then finally our response of faith with chapter three.

The word of the day of course is faith. We're gonna get to that technical definition when we get to I think it's like something along the lines of uh day seventeen or eighteen. But today, uh the church simply and very clearly defines faith as a response to God. You know, later on it'll be a personal adherence to God. But the beginning here is just what's our response to God? And it's remarkable because. Not only is God our source, not only is God our final end,

But God also is the the ground of all being that that that holds us into existence. And it's actually, the catechism says, his love that holds us into existence. And and that's remarkable quoting basically the Second Vatican Council. It says this. It says, For if man exists, it's because God has created him through love.

And through love continues to hold him in existence. One of the things we'll hear, and we're gonna hear this, you know, for the next year, is that God loves you. Maybe this is something that you have heard your entire life. Maybe you've never heard it before, but you likely have heard that God loves you.

I am convinced that most people who hear this word, that God loves them, they don't truly believe it. They believe that God merely tolerates them. Or they'll say, Well, yeah, I know God loves me, but I mean He loves everybody. That's not you're not wrong. God does love every every person he's ever created. But you have to think about this. You and I didn't have to exist. But we do exist. The reason you exist is because God wants you to exist.

And so we realize that wait a second. So yes, God loves everybody, but He loves everybody infinitely uniquely. And infinitely on purpose. And it's just it's it's remarkable. You and I didn't have to exist, yet we do. Why? Because God loved us into existence. That's that's why. To be able to receive that. And every human being, whether they know who God is or don't necessarily have a a s a belief in God.

We have this this longing inside of our hearts. And and here's what again, Second Vatican Council in paragraph twenty-nine calls an intimate and vital bond of man to God. You know, that vital and intimate bond, as the catechism goes on, it says it can be forgotten, overlooked, or even explicitly rejected. Oh, isn't that completely true? So every one of us has been made by God's love and is made for God's love. And yeah.

That can be forgotten. It can be overlooked or even explicitly rejected. We can be indifferent to it. In fact, we're not going to be able to He says those attitudes.

That attitude of rejecting or forgetting or overlooking God's love can have a lot of different causes. One is there's evil in the world. And so we we rebel against that evil by rebelling against God. Or it says religious ignorance or indifference. If there is anything that marks our day and age, it is religious indifference, indifference to the bigger questions, indifference to God himself.

goes on to say the cares and riches of this world, the scandal of bad example on the part of believers, and also even current thoughts hostile to religion, and lastly, our human heart. Our human hearts that want to run away from God and want to, you know, flee from his call. And this is one of those pieces that that is true for every single one of us. And yet in the midst of this, God never ceases to call us to seek him. But the catechism specifies

This search for God demands of man every effort of intellect. So we have to we have to think. A sound will, meaning that I can't be fickle, right? I I can't just choose one thing and then choose the next thing. I can't be of two minds, as the scripture says. An upright heart is necessary. Why? Because I've got to be a person of character. And I've got to I've got to you know, it's one thing to hear the truth and even one thing to know the truth.

It is an entirely different thing to walk in the truth or to acknowledge that to the depths of what we're called to acknowledge the truth. So an upright heart is is necessary. And then the fourth thing that's needed is the witness of others who teach us to seek God. So think about those. We need an intellect, of course, a sound will that's not fickle, an upright heart, depth of character, as well as the witness of others who call us. Das ist Gott.

And that's so so important. Lastly, I just wanna wanna highlight the catechism then specifies ways of coming to know God. So those ways are the world and the human person. We can look at the world around us and we can see, we can we can conclude that God exists. In fact And mentions a couple different ways, and they just name the name the arguments arguments from movement, from becoming, from contingency, from order, from beauty.

To highlight this is crazy because it the arguments behind all those are so deep and so rich and so complex. And the catechism just gives us the words, you know, contingency. What does that mean? Well, think of it in these terms. that if you look at around you right now. If you're driving riding in your car right now, your car doesn't need to exist.

It is contingent, right? It's not necessary. And if you think about like the road you're driving on, that road doesn't need to exist. It is not necessary. It's contingent. Its existence is based off something else. And in fact, if you look at the world around us, the entire planet is contingent, right? It's it's not necessary. In fact, none of us are necessary. We don't have to exist.

So the entire creation is contingent, meaning it doesn't have to exist, it's not necessary, and yet it does exist. And since it does exist, there must be a prior

necessary being that brought all other contingent beings into existence. Does that make sense? It's just a that that is that is a thumbnail sketch of the argument from contingency about God's existence. I I think it's fascinating that The catechism quotes Saint Paul and Saint Augustine and points to beauty, because we look at beauty in this world, that beauty in the world points to the beauty of the artist, the creator of this world.

Lastly, the human person, recognizing that we have an openness to truth and beauty, know knowing that we have a sense of moral goodness, knowing that we have freedom and a conscience, knowing that we long for life, we long for happiness, that There's something in us that that questions there must be more.

Because we we have an appetite for more. C. S. Lewis even kind of highlights this, he says, You have hunger, well, there's such a thing as food. You have thirst, well there's such a thing as drink. You are sleepy, there's such a thing as sleep. And we crave God. There is such a thing as God. And this is just so beautiful that even that hunger in every one of us reveals that God exists. That's why St. Thomas Aquinas says in different ways, all of these different ways.

human beings and come to know that there exists a reality which is the first cause and the final end of all things. A reality that Saint Thomas Quinas says that everyone calls God.

And it's so great. And the last paragraph highlights this that human beings' faculties, our our intellect and our will To make us capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal God, but for us to actually have an intimate relationship with him, God has to reveal himself.

Not only that, God has to give us the grace to know who he is and to respond to him with all of our heart. And so that's one of the things we're going to praying for, not just to know about God, but also for that grace that God gives us. To know him, not just to believe in God, but to believe God.

And for that, we need his grace. For everything, we need his grace. And so that's what we're praying for. I'm praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.