So Much To Learn, So Much Too Love...

I ordered a new book this week and it arrived yesterday. It is by one of my favorite authors, Peter Kreeft, and the book is titled, Catholic Christianity. This is his attempt to make known and help us understand, in his own unique way, our Catholic faith through the Catechism of the Catholic Church. As is always the case with Kreeft, I am not disappointed. I could not help but crack open this new book (it's used, but new to me) even though I'm in the middle of another one, just to get a gist of what I would be getting involved in. I had not even made it to page fifty when I came to this:

"Love grasps him[God] better than knowledge: for love conforms itself to its object, while knowledge has to fit its object into itself, into the limitations of the knower. A child can understand only a tiny part of a parent but can love the whole. Love can be more true to objective reality than knowledge can, in this sense: we can know others only as we can understand them, but we can love them as they are in themselves.

Thought cannot comprehend God, but love can apprehend him. Our minds cannot surround him and define him, but our wills can reach out to him and touch him.  Even among ourselves, we can never fully understand each other, but we can fully love each other.

The ultimate goal of theology is to know God in this way, with the heart and will, not only with the mind: to "know" him as a person loved, not just a concept known. If we know God thus, we will fall on our knees and adore him. Our deepest eyes are in our knees."

This is how I want to know God and I fall far short of that. I know he exists, there is simply too much around me that points to his existence not to believe in him. I have faith in God, though not in the amount that would satisfy me or him. I know he loves me, for he has proven that with the cross. I love him, but again, far, far short of what I believe is expected of me.

He continues: "Every Catholic home and every Catholic believer should have a crucifix. For the answer to all doubts, temptations, and trials is there. (In the reality it pictures, not just in the picture of it.) For instance, the problem of suffering and injustice. God's answer is not an explanation,but a deed: he did not hover above it like a bird but came down and shared it as a man, as a victim. Instead of telling us why not to weep, he wept with us (Jn 11:12). Christ is God's tears. And Christ is the conqueror of tears---and of death." 


So much more to read...and love.