Cur Deus Homo
The truth of our Faith is a truth that far exceeds the capacity of our understanding. As the Church teaches, it is not that Faith is against the understanding, that could not be, since the author of our Faith, and the Creator of our understanding is the same. But it is rather that faith overwhelms the understanding, it presents our minds with a truth that is above it, beyond, with existence beyond our concept of existence.
The Greatest and most powerful mysteries of our faith always relate to God Himself. The Mystery of the most Holy Trinity, the Mystery of the Blessed Eucharist, the Mystery of the Incarnation.
But when we contemplate all these mysteries, there is one underlying truth, that cannot be avoided, and that is indeed a mystery in itself. The Truth that God loves us.
I say it is a mystery, although for Theology it is not. One might read the manuals of dogmatic theology and find an explanation. It seems there is no doubt as to why God loves us; Yet to the Christian Mind, kneeling in front of the Crucifix, Adoring before the Tabernacle, the cold answer from theology seems not to satisfy the question. For that mind in prayer, the question “Why does God love us?” is indeed very similar to all the other mysteries of our faith. Although the truth is given and accepted, it seems it cannot be comprehended by the mind.
To the Christian Heart, seeing the baby Jesus in a poor manger, suffering the hardship of straw, cooled by the freezing wind, abandoned by the souls of even colder men, the idea of God loving us, in spite of our sins, the idea of a God loving us, becoming man for us, descending to our level, in spite of our perversion, our wickedness our ingratitude, seems to remain unanswered:
Why does God love us?
St. Francis of Sales tells us that for love to exist there must be a similarity between the two who love.
But what similarities are there between man and God?
God is eternal. Beyond time, beyond limitation, beyond space. We are creatures, with a beginning and an end, qualified, almost defined by time, finite in every single possible way, from the space we occupy, to the extent of our strength, to the poor abilities of our mind.
God is all goodness, not only (as some say) the fountain of all good, but even good itself. He is existence itself, he is power, he is beauty and truth. And what am I? Not only am I not a source of goodness, but I am a corruptor of what is given. Like rotten fruit, like a polluted stream, even the good things placed in me suffer loss and damage. In my heart and soul, I am able to find utter wickedness. The ability and will to sin. The source of adultery, the councilor of thievery, the author of homicide. My own existence is so precarious, so fragile, that it would not be, were it not by a constant act of God. As the voltaic arc, cannot exist without the circuit that causes it, that dependent and more, am I from God to exist. Power? If there is a term that denies power, such would be me. One considers how utterly powerless I am, when I realize that when I love someone, and I wish to do good to someone else, I cannot even do good of myself, without the use of external elements. I cannot cause someone immediately to be happy, or to be healthy, or to become wise, none of those things can I work of my own power, without the use of externals. Have I the power to live one more second? To raise my height one inch? To think even, without the concourse of God?
And when it comes to beauty and truth, how frequently I discover, that both these things are also misused, abused, tarnished or denied by men. The beauty of creation, we usurp, the beauty of the creature, we abuse, the beauty of art ever reaches an arc that leads it to the bizarre and grotesque. And man is as ignorant of truth, as neglectful to learn it or follow it.
What similarity is there between me and God? Why does God love me?
Could it be for the benefits that mankind bestows upon God?
But such thing is absurd. God receives no goods from me, no wealth, no power. The Creator of all cannot receive anything from the creature, light does not receive its glow from darkness, life does not receive from death, purity does not cleanse from pollution.
So, seeing that I am so dissimilar, seeing that I am so distant from any comparison with the being of God: Why does God love us?
This is a mystery, hidden to the ages. One that could not be revealed but through the dimensions of the Cross. One that could not be answered, but by the completion of revelation. The psalmist, inspired by God, gave us a true answer:
Why does God love us? “Quoniam Bonum, Quoniam in Saeculum Misericordia Ejus”.
Quoniam Bonus. Because He is Good. Because it is, out of Gods own perfection and beauty, inevitable that He would love us. Not of our own, we must forget ourselves. He loves us because of His own Glory, because of His own Goodness, Because of His own Eternal Mercy.
The answer then, reaches the heights of faith. It is something that we can know, but cannot conceive. Something we can hear, and give assent to, but cannot comprehend. Something too beautiful to grasp, too enormous to explain, too overwhelming to apprehend.
Why does God love us? Quoniam Bonus.
And if this principle fills our souls, if we let it sink into our intellect, repeating it over and over again, as the litany of psalm 117 does, we come to understand all the other mysteries of God, above all, the one mystery that occupies us this season, and that seems to be more shocking to the philosophical mind.
Why did God become man?
St. Anselm called it “The Question in which the whole world rests”. The answer to it, seems like a spiritual ladder, that leads the soul from its own depths, to the highest truth, to the answer to that other question: why does God Love us?
The mind goes first to the negative truth: The evil of sin. God created man, in his image and likeness, but this image was destroyed, perverted, when man sinned. Sin, the only true evil, the use of mans faculties to go against itself, against his principle, and against his end. The wickedness and destruction that it causes, could never be measured, were it not for the magnitude of the reparation.
But is that the only reason for the Christ to come and take our nature to be His? If this was so, we would still find no answer to the question: Why does God love us?
Indeed Christ became man for more than that. We need but hear his words when he says to us “I have come to give you life, and life abundantly”.
Our Lord and saviour came, not only to remove the negative that damaged mankind, but also to restore the original plan, and to raise mankind to the heights of grace and glory. Christ became man, not only to undo the devil’s work, but most importantly to complete the work of God, to make a new creation. He did not come only to “put and end to iniquity” (Daniel 9,24) but that we might have life, that we might know the Father, and that we might “participate of his glory and resurrection” (Philippians 3,9).
Thus, God became man, not only to remove sin, and redeem our souls from evil, but further more to bring them to grace, and to have life in them.
St. Thomas Aquinas leads us further, and in his study of the eternal life that Christ came to bestow us, he opens the doors of heaven to a great degree, explaining to us the details of the beatific vision, in as much as words of limited theology can describe.
But a few centuries after, comes another man in love with the baby Jesus, a poor friar who, while singing an ode to the nothings, had also a soft spot for the heart of Jesus. St. John of the Cross. And it is he, the doctor of mystical theology, who dares announce to the world the truth that others did not dare say, for it seemed too outrageous, too pretentious, too much to expect.
Cur Deus Homo?
“Ut sint unum, sicut et nos unum sumus.”
that, they may be one, as we also are one. (John 17,22)
Why did God become man? Not only to obtain the forgiveness of our sins, not only to open the gates of heaven. Not only to lead us to see the Father, in a Beatific vision, but even more, beyond our wildest dreams, beyond what reason could except, in the very heights of faith itself, and faith alone, we learn that God did become man, to unite man with God “ut sint unum”.
In that way, the question that could not be answered, is now answered. Why does God love us? Because it is no longer us, but Christ that dwells in us. In his birth, in his Holy Conception, in his passion, death and resurrection, he joined us to him, that we may be one with him. “And I live, now not I: but Christ liveth in me. And that I live now in the flesh: I live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and delivered himself for me.” (Gal. 2,20)
And thus, the marvelous restoration that seemed impossible takes place, and the creature has some similitude to the creator, impossible as it might seem, to make love possible. Through the Christ, the image of God is restored in man, and our soul, once a clear mirror of the Holy Trinity, becomes once again that perfect image, the Intellect, the Memory and understanding, become once again capable of reflecting the wisdom, the conscience, and the charity of God.
It is, through the Christ made man, that we can love God beyond our limitations, uniting ourselves with the timeless love of Christ, it is through that baby in the manger that we can honor God with infinite Glory, when we offer his Precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
It is in Christ that man becomes good, that man becomes a vehicle of goodness to others, that the soul of man becomes beautiful, becomes abiding in truth, becomes alive, and his words, thoughts and prayers, acquire power, the power to bestow goodness to others, and most importantly, in Christ, in that beautiful and humble babe born in Bethlehem, man becomes able to worthily worship God, and to Truly Love the uncreated, Divine, Glorious and Most Holy Trinity.
This is why, God became man.
There are truths that lie beyond the facts of scientific experimentation. Abstract ideas, general concepts that can only become evident by the more advanced use of reason. This leads us to the higher knowledge of true Philosophy. Above these, there are also truths that reside past the horizon of our minds. These can only be brought to us by a higher power, and we receive them through the Divine Gift of faith.
But there are yet other truths, hidden within those of the faith, that cannot be understood by reason, and seem to hide from those who have faith alone, or I should say, an incomplete and uninformed faith. These truths are only apprehended by the souls that love. By those whose faith is completed by charity. They are embedded in the same words that faith gives, but they are not savored or enjoyed but by those who hold the key of the love of God, and the contempt of self.
These are truths pregnant with action, realities that move not only the intellect to receive, but the will to act.
The answer to the question: Cur Deus Homo?, is indeed one of these last, that can only be understood by those who love.
But the loving soul, pushed into further investigation, will next ask: “Why does God love us”? The answer is as simple, powerful, and eternal as God himself: “Quoniam Bonus”. The experience of all that is contained in such words, we will only have it, when we reach the eternal life, that the God made Man came to give us.
Fr. Carlos Zepeda.
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