Our response to God: a reverent love

By Fr Ian

In previous posts I suggested we ask ourselves three big questions about Christian faith and spiritual life: who is God? What is he like? What, if anything, does he ask of us? 

In this post I’d like to give an answer to the third question, and I’ll start by referring to a passage from Saint Augustine’s Confessions, which ends with what is probably one of the most famous single sentences in the history of Christianity:

God reveals himself to us (5)

by Father Ian

Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4.

'It seems that many church members today lack a developed sense of God’s overwhelming holiness and divinity and majesty. Instead, their attitude is nonchalant, casual, indifferent. What this almost certainly means, unfortunately, is that they have not yet had a significant encounter with God in their lives. If they had, they would have begun to realise how inappropriate casualness, nonchalance and indifference are.'

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In a recent short book Catholic theologian Ulrich Lehner 'reintroduces Christians 

to the true God: not the polite, easygoing, divine therapist who doesn't ask much of us, but 

the Almighty God who is unpredictable, awe-inspiring, and demands our entire lives.  

(Click on the picture for the book's Amazon UK page.)

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God reveals himself to us (4)

by Fr Ian

(Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here)

'In many ways the 'Spiritual But Not Religious' outlook appears as an outgrowth of affluent western consumer culture: it has a strong element of the modern therapeutic search for personal wellbeing and security and tends towards a rather individualistic, inward-looking and self-serving attitude.'

What I want to look at now is: 

C. Some mistaken ideas about God

Let’s go back to the three central questions I suggested we consider earlier: who is God, what is he like, what, if anything does he ask of us?

God reveals himself to us (3)

by Fr Ian

(Part One here, Part Two here)

God's revelation of the truth about himself is available for us in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. Christians must trust these sources above our personal opinions and ideas. God speaks to us, 'not to impart information, but to invite us to share his life and to elicit a response to his invitation'.

Saint Jerome, c. 342–347 – 420, the patron saint of biblical scholars: 

'Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ'

God reveals himself to us (2)

by Fr Ian

(Part I here)

First of all then,

A. the fact of God’s self-revelation.

'Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, 

for the place on which you are standing is holy  ground.’ (Exodus 3: 5) 

Picture: fresco by Raphael Sanzio, 1519.

The root meaning of the word ‘revelation’ is the drawing back of a veil so that we can see something that would otherwise be concealed or obscured. 

'Divine Revelation' refers to the fact that God, at various points in the course of human history, instead of leaving us in the dark about his existence and his character, and the purposes that he has written into human existence, has ‘pulled back the veil’ so that we can see him, know him and enter into relationship with him.

God reveals himself to us (1)

Fr Ian reflects on one of the foundations of Christian spiritual life: that the God we are called to know and love has not left us in ignorance about who he is and what he's like, but has revealed his nature and character to us. 

Mark 12: 28–30.

And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength”...’.

I think these verses from Saint Mark’s gospel, where Jesus talks about a wholehearted, all-encompassing love towards God as the first or greatest commandment, get to the heart of what we, as Christians, mean when we use the expression ‘the spiritual life’.