God is Our Cause
by Pat Gohn in Faith on Thursday, February 04, 2010 6:00 AM
“Cause and effect.” It’s a two-fold dynamic. It’s an expression we use rather liberally.
Parents use it to outline disciplinary measures with their children. As a mother of a newly licensed teen, I have often said, “Bring the car home late after curfew and you will feel the effects of suspended driving privileges.” Indeed, there must be an active choice on my son’s part to comply. It involves surrender of both the intellect and will to the family “house rules” and the driving laws of the state.
Scientists use cause and effect to describe laws of nature and experimentation. Stand by the ocean shoreline long enough and you will observe the moon’s slow gravitational pull on the earth’s tides. Or for a chemical display of cause and effect, add vinegar to baking soda and you have all the makings of a small volcano for a science project!
Cause and effect has spiritual ramifications where our Christian life is concerned too.
The great theologian St. Thomas Aquinas, and many before him and since, taught that God is the first great cause. That knowledge tells us that everything – life as we know it – originates with God. Before the universe existed, God did.
God simply is.
The reason we can know God at all is because God reveals himself to us. And, that, if you give it a moment’s reflection, is extraordinary.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in CCC 142 states:
By his Revelation, the invisible God, from the fullness of his love, addresses men as his friends, and moves among them, in order to invite and receive them into his own company.
Read that again. Slowly.
More magnificent than an engraved invitation to have tea with the Queen of England ...
Greater than a free coupon to ride the NASA space shuttle ...
And more sublime than a personal call from Benedict XVI inviting you to a private audience in the Apostolic Palace …
This invitation to meet God, and to be received into his company and friendship, requests the favor of a personal reply.
It requires only one response: Faith.
CCC 143:
By faith, man completely submits his intellect and his will to God. With his whole being man gives his assent to God the revealer. Sacred Scripture calls this human response to God, the author of revelation, “the obedience of faith” (Cf. Rom 1:5; 16:26).
God is our great cause. But only we have the power to generate the effect that God truly desires. God’s deliberately revealed invitation can go unanswered if we so choose … creating a gap between cause and effect, an unanswered silence between God’s revelation and our response.
The great patriarch, Abraham, taught us the proper response of faith – this “obedience of faith.” In fact, he freely submitted to “the word that [had] been heard, because its truth is guaranteed by God who is Truth itself.” (CCC 144)
Abraham, “strong in faith”, became the “father of all who believed.” (See Rom 4:11,18; 4:20.) Abraham’s legacy of faith continues through the ages.
Mary, the virgin from Nazareth, became the Mother of God by responding to God’s invitation in her life. She perfectly embodies the “obedience of faith.” After God’s angel revealed her destiny to become the mother of God’s Son, Mary responded: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.”
There was no gap between God’s call and Mary’s “yes.” God invited and Mary answered. Her first “yes” initiated a lifelong “yes” to God.
CCC 149:
Throughout her life and until her last ordeal when Jesus her son died on the cross, Mary’s faith never wavered. She never ceased to believe in the fulfillment of God’s word. And so the Church venerates in Mary the purest realization of faith.
Mary’s cousin Elizabeth forever captured the on-going-ness of faith in this description of Mary (but it could be the description for every Christian): “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.” (Luke 1:45)
Blessed are we, too, when we respond to God’s bountiful invitation with a faith-filled RSVP. Like Abraham and Mary, marvelous will be His effects in us.
Want to read more?
CCC 176:
Faith is a personal adherence of the whole man to God who reveals himself. It involves an assent of the intellect and will to the self-revelation God has made through his deeds and words.
—Pat Gohn is a wife & mother celebrating 27 years of Catholic family life. Her Catholic writing, podcasting, and ministry life are found at PatGohn.com.
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