How Big Is Your God?
by Pat Gohn in Faith on Sunday, July 25, 2010 10:31 PM
Reading about the Creed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), paragraph 278, you come upon a compelling question:
If we don’t believe that God’s love is almighty, how can we believe that the Father could create us, the Son redeem us, and the Holy Spirit sanctify us?
It might as well have asked me: “How big is your God?” Or even, “How small is your faith?”
It got my attention and it made me think about the words that I profess to believe in the Creed: “We believe in God, the Father, the Almighty…”
God has many incredible attributes, but only God’s omnipotence as “Almighty” is named in the Creed.
It is wise to know just what we are saying with that word, “Almighty.”
The Almighty’s power is universal. God rules everything and can do everything. God is master of the universe and the Lord of history. His will is limitless.
Everything. Is. Possible. For. God.
Psalm 115:3: “He does whatever he pleases.”
Consider CCC 270:
God is the Father Almighty, whose fatherhood and power shed light on one another: God reveals his fatherly omnipotence by the way he takes care of our needs; by the filial adoption that he gives us (“I will be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty”. See 2 Cor 6:18; cf. Mt 6:32.): finally by his infinite mercy, for he displays his power at its height by freely forgiving sins.
God’s infinite power also admits a profound fatherly love for us. God tends to our human needs in both temporal and spiritual ways. God takes care of us in and through the creation of the world, and by calling us into communion with himself and others. What’s more, God’s love is so intensely merciful that it forgives sins so that we may enter God’s family as sons and daughters by grace.
Okay, that sounds good, but what about the problems of evil and suffering in the world? Many good people use this claim against the Almighty power of God for their own lack of belief. The human mind is often daunted by the paradox of God’s seeming powerlessness in the face of evil and suffering.
Evil and suffering tend to coax us to doubt the presence of God’s love. Faith in God, and specifically, faith in the Father Almighty, can be put to the test.
It is crucial to one’s faith, therefore, to come of a full understanding of the Almighty Love of God.
St. Paul, familiar with the questions of evil and suffering, acknowledges their dramatic climax in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. To St. Paul, Christ crucified is “the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. (See 1 Cor. 1:24-25.)”
The Catechism also responds in CCC 272:
The most mysterious way God the Father has revealed his almighty power in the voluntary humiliation and Resurrection of his Son, by which he conquered evil… It is in Christ’s Resurrection and exaltation that the Father has shown forth “the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe” [Eph 1:19-22.]
What is being said here? Reason alone cannot grasp the Almighty power of God. It must be assisted by faith, for “only faith can embrace the mysterious ways of God’s almighty power (CCC 273).”
The very heights and depths of knowing God as Almighty cannot be fully known to us in this world. Yet just as the Apostles and the early Christians marveled at the resurrected and Risen Lord Jesus, so too, we must stand amazed and awed at God’s Almighty-ness: for nothing is impossible for God… even what seem above and beyond the laws of nature.
If we can aspire to acknowledge God’s almighty power with our minds, and affirm the “Father Almighty” in our Creed, “we will easily and without hesitation admit everything” that follows in the Creed (CCC 274).
God as Almighty is bedrock to the Creed and all the incredible truths that follow it… such as the Incarnation, and the saving work of the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus, and the coming of the Holy Spirit who brings grace that empowers the Church on earth, so that believers may one day rise again, transformed with glorified bodies, and take a seat beside the communion of saints in heaven!
In short, is God, Almighty?
If God is something less than omnipotent and almighty then the rest of the Creed, and our beliefs, fall apart.
Want to read more?
Check out CCC 276:
Faithful to the witness of Scripture, the Church often addresses her prayer to the “almighty and eternal God” (“omnipotens sempiterne Deus. ..”), believing firmly that “nothing will be impossible with God” (Gen 18:14; Lk 1:37; Mt 19:26).
—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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