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Catholicism Week 5The Mystery of God Part 1

I found it more than strange to hear Bishop Barron agreeing with atheists about their ideas about God…the God they don’t believe in. He makes the point that most atheists deny that there is a supreme being either as a part of this world or above the world, and Bishop Barron agrees. Atheists reject the idea of God as a distant clock maker that at some point in the long past wound up the universe like a clock, and once it was in motion He simply abandoned it to fend on its own. Again, Bishop agrees. Even the idea of a god to an atheist is a problem. God looks like a competitor to godless people, taking away man’s freedom and usurping our human power, even though again, they deny God’s existence. Here Bishop Barron disagrees with atheists and their false understanding of God. Then he drops this bombshell, Bishop believes that atheists have real a hunger for the true God, whom they deny exists, just like you and I hunger for God. That is where he got all my attention. How can they hunger for a god they deny exists?

This has to be one of my favorite episodes of this entire Catholicism series, The Mystery of God. It brings back to me the moment in my life where I let God out of

the box, the box that I unknowingly created for Him. The very first course I studied during my Newman University master’s program attempted to answer the critical question, who is God? I realized then, as I think many of you will by the end of this class today, that my idea of God was so limited, it was as if I made a box and shoved Him into it. But…in a single moment of time, thinking now as a brand new Catholic, that all changed. Bishop starts

out this episode with a story that most of us would be familiar with, Moses in front of the burning bush on the side of Mt. Sinai. He saw a bush on fire, but it

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was not being consumed, and as he approaches a voice said, “Moses, Moses…come no closer…remove your sandals for you are on holy ground.” God revealed Himself to Moses as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and went on to declare the mission He had for Moses to free His people enslaved in Egypt.

As this conversation continued between God and this simple man who was at one time Egyptian royalty, now a humble shepherd, Moses then asked for God’s name. He wanted to know the name of this voice booming at him. God responded as only God can, “my name is, I am who I am.” In the world that Moses lived in there were many gods, he wanted to know which god this was. Egyptians worshiped many gods, the sun god, the moon god, the river god, but had never heard of a burning bush god, this was a new god on the list of many and he needed a name. But the name God gave Moses was not like any of the other named gods, this one’s name sounded very different, not one supreme being among many, but instead “I am” …this God was simply the one who “is”.

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Catholic sacred tradition rejects the idea that God is one among many gods, Catholics believe that God is not a being, but…listen carefully…being itself. Every time I hear those words, God is being itself, it takes me back to sitting in class at Newman University and having all of my naïve theology, my whole flawed

understanding of God, turned upside down. That phrase gives me goosebumps to this day, and it comes from, who else, Thomas Aquinas…the giant among Catholic theologians. Aquinas went on to say that God did not belong to any genus, any category…that simply means this God who is being itself, cannot be defined, there is no box that can contain Him. St. Anselm of Canterbury said this, “God is that, the greater than which cannot be conceived.” In other words, whatever your conception of God is, it is wrong…period. Think for a moment about the highest and greatest thing you could possibly imagine, and God will always be greater than that. Your imagination cannot contain God…He is beyond all limits…He is the unbegun God, and He is, and He will always be. We have no way to think of that possibility.

The true God who created each and every one of us here this morning is essentially mystery, a Greek word that means to “shut the mouth”. I love what St. Augustine had to say about God, “if you think you understand God…that isn’t God.” Bishop Barron has such a simple way of talking about God, especially when he described why Moses pressed God for His name. To some degree names give us control over one another. If I know your name, I can call you up and maybe you will come if I ask. At the very least I can look you up on the internet and find out all kinds of things about you, to gain some leverage over you if I want to. Moses was seeking some kind of control over this “burning bush god”, but God was having none of that, and God declared “my name is I am” …in other words Moses stop asking stupid questions…I am mystery…shut your mouth.

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Bishop brings up a great point about Aquinas, as someone who declared that God was beyond all our words, and yet Thomas wrote volumes and volumes of words about God. The reality is that we will never be able to explain who God is, words

will fail us. But we can write, and many men have written, millions upon millions of words about who and what God is not. And then Bishop recalled this strange encounter

between Moses and God, in Exodus chapter 33. Exodus 33:18–23 (RSV2CE) 18 Moses said, “I beg you, show me your glory.” 19 And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord’; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. 20 But,” he said, “you cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live.” 21 And the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand upon the rock; 22 and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; 23 then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.” I think that painting of this event in the Sistine Chapel is a perfect example of how limited we are in describing God…Michelangelo basically shows God mooning Moses, but there is a greater understanding to all of this. The reality is this, no one can see God face to face, and live, but we can see the presence of God and perceive His existence indirectly in the things He has made. St. Paul puts it his way in his letter to the Romans, Romans 1:19–20 (RSV2CE) 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 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. So they are without excuse;

Bishop Barron tells us that he first heard of Thomas Aquinas’ five arguments for

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the existence of God when he was fourteen, and it changed his life. I really don’t remember what I as doing at fourteen years old, but I am pretty sure it was not studying Aquinas’ five arguments for the existence of God. Looking back now at those young years, I wish somebody had shared those with me. This video just looks at one of those arguments, but it is a very good one to ponder. It is the argument from contingency. This argument is simple but profound. Take anything you can see in this world and consider this truth. Everything we can see had a beginning and will have an end…all things come into existence and then go out of existence. Take the billowing clouds of a warm summer day, they come and then they go and are no more…only to start all over again. Think about all the flowers that have ever come into full bloom, where are they now? They come, and they go. All the people we have ever known, all those that have lived and died, they were here and then they were gone. Psalm 90:3–6 (RSV2CE) 3 You turn man back to the dust, and say, “Turn back, O children of men.” 4 For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night. 5 You sweep men away; they are like a dream, like grass which is renewed in the morning: 6 in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers.

Even things that seem eternal, the Rocky Mountains, they too had a beginning and some day will come to an end. The Grand Canyon is clear evidence of a

plateau that once existed millions of years ago with a river slowly but surely cutting through it. Over time, millennia after millennia, it etched in the land we now call Arizona one of the great wonders of the world, the grandest canyon known to mankind. Planets come and go, and even the central star in our galaxy, that we call the sun, had a beginning and will come to an

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end. Every one of those things were contingent on something that came before them. Those summer clouds were contingent on and formed from the water evaporating from the ocean, creating those cloud formations. Flowers need seeds planted in the rich dirt and enough water to allow them to sprout and come to full blossom and then fade and die. Mountains come from great continental plates pushing against one another to push up massive rock formations like the Rockies, or molten rock erupting from violent volcanoes creating entire land masses over eons and eons. Ancient land masses that we now call the Hawaiian Islands. All the stars and planets and comets and millions of galaxies, all the matter making up the entire universe was contingent on a time when nothing existed and then came the Big Bang…and by the way that ground-breaking theory came from the spirit, soul and brain of a Catholic priest.

Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître, RAS Associate (French); 17 July 1894 – 20 June 1966) was a Belgian Roman Catholic priest, mathematician, astronomer, and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Louvain. He proposed on theoretical grounds that the universe is expanding, which was observationally confirmed soon afterwards by Edwin Hubble. He was the first to derive what is now known as Hubble's law, or the Hubble-Lemaître law, and made the first estimation of what is now called the Hubble constant, which he published in 1927, two years before Hubble's article. Lemaître also

proposed what became known as the "Big Bang theory" of the creation of the universe, originally calling it the "hypothesis of the primeval atom". (Wikipedia 2019)

In the end all contingencies take us back to one primal colossal event…the very beginning of time, space and history…the Big Bang. But what, you might ask any atheist, came before that? What made the Big Bang happen. Whatever the atheists and the physicists call the contingency that created the Big Bang, we Catholics call God…I am who I am…I am being itself. Bishop goes on to discuss a young brilliant theologian and priest from Germany,

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Joseph Ratzinger, who would later become Pope Benedict the XVI, came up with his own proof of God’s existence many years ago. He authored a book titled, Introduction to Christianity, and in it He posited that the universe reveals to all who care to truly inquire and pursue the truth it offers, the work of a great intelligence that is embedded in its very existence. Even the ancients had a saying, “being is knowable”. In fact, modern science is dependent on this mystical truth, all scientists go to work every day believing that the great questions of our existence, how did we get here and why are we here, are all knowable…the answers are out there, if not, then why pursue science at all?

I will bet you most Catholics have no idea that the Vatican built and operates a modern state-of-the-art observatory high up on a mountain outside of Tucson, AZ. What a wonderful merging of both religion and science up on that mountain out in the desert. Ratzinger even quoted Einstein to support his theory of embedded intelligibility, “In the laws of nature, a mind so superior is revealed, as in comparison to it, our minds count as something worthless.”

John 1:1–3 (RSV2CE) 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God; 3 all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. The Greek word for the English, “Word”, is logos, and logos could just as easily be translated in English using the word “mind”. After all, where do all our words come from…the mind. Ratzinger would look at this passage

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and see that the great mind of God was the divine intelligence behind the entire creation. Aquinas’ proofs of God’s existence came long before the Big Bang theory, back in the 13th century, but his understanding of contingency is perfectly married to the understanding of the 20th century theory of the Big Bang. I believe Aquinas and Lemaitre are probably having some great discussions in heaven right at this very moment as they putter around the universe.The last part of this video for today is very important for all of us to understand. Bishop Barron warns us that we human beings have a weakness to either grasp for God, or to flee from Him…neither tendency helps us on our journey in this life. His first example is one I have really spent some time thinking about. Why did Adam and Eve eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil…the one that God warned them about…when they had free access to eat all they wanted from the tree of life? Bishop answered this nagging question for me, and the answer he gave made perfect sense…they wanted to decide for themselves what was right and what was wrong. If that is not playing God, I don’t know what is. I had one of those “ah hah” moments. What do you think is happening to our demise in our generation, and really has happened in every generation that ever lived? We thumb our nose at God, and we decide to choose what is right what is wrong. Once we grasp at God, so we can be like Him, we expose the lie that the devil has used on every human being from the very beginning, all the way back to the Garden of Eden. Let’s stomp on the devil’s head together right here and now…you will never be like God…because there is no one like God…absolutely no one. He is Himself…utterly “other” from all human beings. He is the only one qualified to determine good from evil. The sooner we learn that, the better off we will be. Human beings need to stop trying to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil choosing our own way, and instead have a feast at the tree of life…quit grasping at God.

But…we also need to stop trying to flee from God. How stupid is that? You can’t run from God…Adam and Eve very quickly found that out. After they miserably failed at grasping for God, they realized they were naked and ran and hid from Him, to try and cover their shame. Psalm 139:1–8 (RSV2CE) 1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me! 2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. 3 You search out my path and my lying down, and

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are acquainted with all my ways. 4 Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. 5 You beset me behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it. 7 Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! Who is this God…God is above all…and yet He is “in” all…we are just getting started.