God is. Christian Faith adds here that God is as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – three Persons in one God. Among Christians, an embarrassed silence frequently greets any reference to this central tenet of their Faith. Has the Church perhaps gone too far in this instance? Would it not be better simply to leave something so great, so incomprehensible, to its incomprehensibility? Can such a statement really be meaningful for us? To be sure, this sentence is and remains an expression of the “otherness” of God, who is infinitely greater than we are and exceeds all our thinking and being.
God is. That means that there is a sovereign truth and law above all our goals and interests. There is a value in things that are valueless from our earthly perspective. There is the adoration of God himself, the true adoration that protects us from the dictatorship of idols.
God is. That means that all of us are his creatures. Just creatures, but even as creatures we truly have our origin from God. We are creatures that he has willed into being and destined for eternity. Even our neighbor – perhaps even that unlikable individual next to me – is one of God’s creatures. Men are not the result of chance or of a struggle for existence that brings victory to the practical and the strong. No, man is the product of God’s creative love.
God is. That means that he can act, and that he truly does act – now – in this world and in our lives…Do we trust him? Do we regard him as a reality when we asses our lives, our day-to-day experiences? Have we grasped the meaning of the first tablet of the Ten Commandments, which explicitly states the basic obligations of human life and so, in some sense, corresponds to the first three petitions of the Our Father – the petitions that summarize the first tablet of the law and make it the fundamental orientation of our spirits and of our lives?
From Auf Christus schauen, pp. 96-97
