This I Believe

WHAT I BELIEVE: GOD’S PLAN/WISDOM/GIFT

In His infinite love God shared being by creating ex nihilo. As creatures came into existence each was earmarked with intrinsic goodness and power characteristic of a given nature. Conflict between the delegated powers inherent in each specie was willed by God so that creation could gradually develop in perfection as a whole through a cooperative interaction, most often instinctive and at times violent. At the pinnacle He created persons in His own image with spiritual souls exercising self-directed pursuit of truth and good. Such a spiritual faculty of freedom introduced into the cooperative interaction the possibility of a violation of the growth in perfection. This objective goal can be hindered by a self-engrandizing pride independent from the overall divine plan. This is called sin and it has been characteristic of the use of personal freedom from the beginning.

In His goodness and love God related to one people to prepare for a singular interaction with creation. God’s Trinitarian Divine Nature is of Thinker thinking a reflective Thought so perfectly as to constitute two distinct but united and equal Persons, the Father and Son or Word. They love each other with such perfection as to constitute a third distinct but equal and united Person, the Holy Spirit. The interaction with creatures centered on the Son’s uniting the Divine Nature with a human nature through the Person of the Word in the Incarnation of Jesus. He is the Messiah or Christ prepared for in Israelite history and Whose Resurrection, Ascension and sending of the empowering Holy Spirit led to Christianity. Jesus as the Word revealed to His followers all that God wished for us to understand of His Divine Reality and our mutual relationship.

The Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity in the human nature of

Jesus is a beautiful accommodation to our nature. It is God’s plan to live as

one of us to unite us to Himself by participation and to one another in His

Divine Love. Because of our sinfulness Jesus also fulfilled the role of Redeemer

to make this union possible for those who would repent of their personal

pride. Jesus’ redemption took place in history when His Divine claims and

actions, especially His table fellowship with sinners in violation of the purity

laws of the rabbis and warnings of national destruction, became intolerable

to His compatriots. Despite His miracles and concern for the anawim He

was crucified. He brought good from this great evil by offering His human

life as an act of redemption on behalf of His brothers and sisters. The act is

of infinite value because of the Person of the Son Who made the offering.

The Resurrection, Ascension and Pentecost are the events that certify to God’s

acceptance of the sacrificial offering.

Through the His associates Jesus applies His redemptive act throughout space

and time. This membership in the Mystic Christ is explicit or sometimes implicit,

with basic goodness of heart at its core. The redemption of Jesus is cosmic and

includes all of creation that therefore calls for our profound respect and

conservation of nature.

The Church as Jesus’ instrument is a further accommodation to our nature. It is to

fulfill Jesus’ prayer “that all may be one” and ministers by a sacramental life

through leaders chosen by divine vocation and acted out in natural personal

circumstances. All of the sacraments and especially the Liturgy of the Eucharist

are preformed in accord with the constitutive Word of God revealed in the Sacred

Scriptures and Tradition of the Judeo-Christian heritage. Here Jesus continues

His enabling and preserving presence through the Holy Spirit.

In the Eucharist, especially, Jesus is present among His followers in Word and

Communion. The latter is the real reception of His Body and Blood under the

appearances of bread and wine. In this manner God elevates and unites us to

Himself in participative spiritual union.

The ultimate union to which we are called is the heavenly Beatific Vision. Here

the spiritualized body will at the end of time will be reunited with the already

beatified soul whose intellect and will are in direct and immediate contact with

infinitely fulfilling Truth and Love. Thereby, it will share in God’s Life with the

saints. A glimpse of this is granted to a few during this life in the prayer of

contemplation. As one rests in God during prayer one is oriented toward this

union that will be perfected after any needed purification following the final

blessimg that death is meant to be.