Vol. III January 2000

Is it possible to understand God?

There is a story told about what happened to St. Augustine as he tried to fathom the mystery of God: His great desire was to understand the Holy Trinity. He gave himself to meditating on this mystery. One day as he paced up and down the shore of the sea he saw a child with a shell in his hand. With the aid of this shell the boy was fetching water from the sea and pouring it into a small hole in the sand. As he continued this apparently futile task Augustine approached and asked what he was trying to do. The boy replied that he was trying to pour the sea into the hole that he had just dug. The Saint pleaded with him -- common sense clearly showed that it would be totally impossible to pour the entire sea into such a small hole. The young boy, revealing himself to be an Angel, looked at our Saint and replied: "It would be easier to put the entire sea into this little hole than for you to explain the least part of the Mystery of the Blessed Trinity". Saint Augustine was silenced.

It is indeed impossible to fully comprehend the mystery of the Blessed Trinity. It is equally impossible to understand God Our Father. The truth of Our Father’s incomprehensibility is reflected in the words "who art in heaven".

Yes, God is "Our Father". These words show how much He desires to enter into intimate friendship with us. If we truly love Our Father we will treat Him as our closest friend.

But we can never forget that Our Friend is beyond our comprehension. He is in heaven. He is above and beyond anything we can possibly imagine or comprehend. In a certain sense we must say that there is an infinite distance between ourselves and Our Own Father. It is no exaggeration to affirm that it would be easier to pour the entire Atlantic Ocean into a bucket than to comprehend God Our Own Loving Father. Yes, there is an infinite distance between ourselves and God, but that distance in bridged by love.

Do you tell your secrets to your enemies, to somebody with whom you are chatting for the very first time, or to your friends? Nobody confides in his enemies nor in unknown persons. We reveal our secrets to our dearest friends. It is similar with God. If we really love Him He will slowly but surely begin to disclose His secrets to us. In other words those who love God most, those who have a close friendship with the Father, get to know Him best. He transmits His insights to those who deserve His confidence. Of course He can also reveal the mystery of His Life and Love to those who do not yet love Him, in the hope that they will begin to do so. However, He normally prefers to commune with His closest friends, so that they can slowly but surely understand Him with ever more profundity.

To know the secret plans and intentions of the President of our country would be considered a great privilege and bring us great joy. To know God transmits an even greater joy. If we could only convince ourselves of the truth, "our happiness lies in knowing God", we would spend our entire life loving Him. Here in this life our knowledge of Him can always grow. In other words, the intensity of our happiness can always increase.

Let us strive to know and love God with all our mind and all our heart. But let us remember that there is always more to understand. Our Father’s Love is too great to be understood comprehensively. If we could grasp His Love it would be a sign that it is small and narrow just like yours and mine. The fact that we will never be able to fully understand His Love should be a source of great joy to us -- it shows us how superabundant that Love really is.

Did you ever ask yourself what does it mean that The Father is in heaven? Did you ever go a step further and ask who was in heaven when Christ taught the Our Father for the first time? What did the Apostles understand when Christ said "Our Father, who art in heaven"? What could they have possibly understood by the expression that the Father was in heaven?

To be in heaven means to be in a state of perfect happiness. Undoubtedly the Father Himself is an Ocean of Happiness. Likewise Christ and the Holy Spirit enjoy a Happiness that is beyond our comprehension. But when Christ taught this prayer for the first time there were also other persons in heaven: There was no man, nor was there any woman there, but God’s Holy Angels were already participating in the Happiness of the Father. When we meditate on the words "who art in heaven" we should think of God the Father among His Angels. Or better still, we should think of the Angels with God the Father. God the Father is the happiness of the Angels. Christ affirmed that the "angels always behold the face of My Father who is in heaven" (Mt 18,10).

This could stimulate a further meditation, the mediation on the happiness of your own Guardian Angel. Can you imagine the happiness that would descend over every person in Ireland if we were to receive an absolute guarantee that the peace process in the North had come to a perfect conclusion, that there existed a complete reconciliation between all parties involved, and that there would never again be any sign of tension. The peace and happiness that such news would bring would be a very faint reflection of the happiness that the Angels enjoy with God the Father.

The Angels are truly powerful creatures. They surpass in perfection all visible creatures. Their intellectual capacity is greater than that of the most brilliant men. It is for this reason that they are also capable of a happiness that we cannot yet understand.

There is one thing we all have in common: quest for happiness. Every human person desires and tends towards this goal. In a very recent document our Holy Father stressed an age old truth. There is only one access to salvation: ‘this access is Jesus, the only and absolute way of salvation’. This is another way of saying that there is only one way to definitive happiness -- though Our Lord Jesus Christ.

One can say that here in this life we already begin to share in the happiness of Christ. He transmits this happiness to us through Holy Communion. In the Eucharist we receive His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. Let us think a little about His Soul. His Soul is the seat of His human happiness. He is truly happy as a Man. But this happiness comes from His Divinity. His Father fills His human soul with a happiness that is at once truly human and truly divine. Christ then serves as a bridge, He Himself passes His happiness onto all those that come into contact with Him. As we come into contact with Him principally through the Mass and Holy Communion, we confess that our happiness, a happiness that is often not felt at an emotional level, comes principally through Christ in the Eucharist.

It is Christ that leads all men to the Father. When each new saint arrives in heaven the words "Our Father, who art in heaven" seem to take on a new dimension. The happiness of the Father is now inundating yet another human being. Then there is another human person in the presence of the Father. Through Christ, another human person has reached true fulfillment, and now sings with all his might: "Hallowed be thy name".