Q & A Catechism – Part 4 – “To Know”

There is a vast difference between knowing someone vs. knowing about a person. To know about someone is to know details, perhaps in a way that is second-hand by something you and I have read. We may also recognize someone by name or face on TV, yet you and I have never even met the person before. For example, I know about St. John Paul II. Though he is like a spiritual grandfather to me from all I have read about him or watched on TV, yet I have never met him. Nor has he met me. So I don’t truly know him but rather just know about him.

But to know someone is to enter into a relationship. Some of you don’t just know about your spouse. You really and truly know your husband or wife to the point that you could finish his/her sentences. Others of us don’t just know about our friends. We really and truly know them for who they are having shared many one-on-one experiences with them and thus having earned their trust. One can simply come to know another by spending time with him or her. In keeping the focus on “knowing” rather than “knowing about” someone, the question I would like to pose today is…

Q: How do we come to know God?

A: We can come to know God by spending time with him too either through prayer, reading his inspired Word in Sacred Scripture, spending time with him in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, and other ways.

Created in God’s image and called to know and love him, the person who seeks God discovers certain ways of coming to know him. These are also called proofs for the existence of God, not in the sense of proofs in the natural sciences, but rather in the sense of “converging and convincing arguments”, which allow us to attain certainty about the truth. These “ways” of approaching God from creation have a twofold point of departure: the physical world, and the human person.

The world: starting from movement, becoming, contingency, and the world’s order and beauty, one can come to a knowledge of God as the origin and the end of the universe.

As St. Paul says of the Gentiles: For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 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.7

And St. Augustine issues this challenge: Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air distending and diffusing itself, question the beauty of the sky. . . question all these realities. All respond: “See, we are beautiful.” Their beauty is a profession [confessio]. These beauties are subject to change. Who made them if not the Beautiful One [Pulcher] who is not subject to change?8

The human person: with his openness to truth and beauty, his sense of moral goodness, his freedom and the voice of his conscience, with his longings for the infinite and for happiness, man questions himself about God’s existence. In all this he discerns signs of his spiritual soul. The soul, the “seed of eternity we bear in ourselves, irreducible to the merely material”,9 can have its origin only in God.

The world, and man, attest that they contain within themselves neither their first principle nor their final end, but rather that they participate in Being itself, which alone is without origin or end. Thus, in different ways, man can come to know that there exists a reality which is the first cause and final end of all things, a reality “that everyone calls God”.10

Man’s faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal God. But for man to be able to enter into real intimacy with him, God willed both to reveal himself to man, and to give him the grace of being able to welcome this revelation in faith. (So) the proofs of God’s existence, however, can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason.

Source: *Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC #s 31-35)

References:
7 > Rom. 1:19-20; cf., > Acts 14:15 > 17 > 17:27-28; > Wis. 13:1-9
8 St. Augustine, Sermo 241, 2: PL 38, 1134
9 GS (Gaudium et Spes > Joy and Hope)18 # 1; cf. 14 # 2.
10 St. Thomas Aquinas, S Th I, 2, 3.

Further Reading: “The Knowledge of God According to The Church:” Catechism #s 36-38.

Author: Fr. Jeff Allan

Biography - Fr. Jeff Allan, was ordained a Catholic priest on June 7th, 2014 for the Archdiocese of Detroit (AOD). He graduated from Adrian College in 2001 with a degree in Business Administration and a minor in Criminal Justice. After working in the pharmaceutical sales industry for almost three years, he felt called to discern the priesthood. Before being ordained a priest, Fr. Jeff was blessed to receive three degrees from Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit. They include a Bachelor of Philosophy, Baccalaureate in Sacred Theology (STB), and a Master of Divinity (Theology). His assignments in the U.S. have included serving at multiple parishes in the Archdiocese of Detroit as an associate pastor and currently as a weekend assistant. Fr. Jeff is certified as a hospital chaplain through ACPE (Association for Clinical Pastoral Education). He has had the opportunity of serving at three Metro-Detroit Area Hospitals since 2017 where he serves in full-time ministry as a Catholic Priest and Hospital Chaplain. View all posts by Fr. Jeff Allan