YOUCAT Question n. 7 - Part II. Why did God have to show himself in order for us to be able to know what he is like?
(Youcat answer - repeated) Man can know by reason that
God exists, but not what God is really like. Yet because God would very much
like to be known, he has revealed himself.
A deepening through
CCC
(CCC 51) "It pleased God, in his goodness and wisdom,
to reveal himself and to make known the mystery of his will. His will was that
men should have access to the Father, through Christ, the Word made flesh, in
the Holy Spirit, and thus become sharers in the divine nature." (DV 2; cf.
Eph 1:9; 2:18; 2 Pt 1:4). (CCC 52) God, who "dwells in unapproachable
light", wants to communicate his own divine life to the men he freely
created, in order to adopt them as his sons in his only-begotten Son (1 Tim
6:16, cf. Eph 1:4-5). By revealing himself God wishes to make them capable of
responding to him, and of knowing him and of loving him far beyond their own
natural capacity.
Reflecting and
meditating
(Youcat comment) God did not
have to reveal himself to us. But he did it—out of love. Just as in human love one can know something
about the beloved person only if he opens his heart to us, so too we know
something about God’s inmost thoughts only because the eternal and mysterious
God has opened himself to us out of love. From creation on, through the
patriarchs and the prophets down to the definitive Revelation in his Son Jesus
Christ, God has spoken again and again to mankind. In him he has poured out his
heart to us and made his inmost being visible for us.
(CCC Comment)
(CCC 68) By love, God has revealed himself and given himself
to man. He has thus provided the definitive, superabundant answer to the
questions that man asks himself about the meaning and purpose of his life. (CCC
69) God has revealed himself to man by gradually communicating his own mystery
in deeds and in words.[End]
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