Many years ago I visited a friend. He and his wife had two successful businesses and three lovely daughters. He invited me for a short drive in his brand new Buick. During the drive he said, “Everything is going so well with the businesses and the family and I really like this new car. But, you know, it is like there is still something missing and I can’t figure out what it is.”
One affluent couple that I know were successful in business and had two thriving children when seemingly out of nowhere, the wife announced that she no longer had feelings for her husband and wanted a divorce. It was like there was something missing in her life and not even family and possessions could fill the void.
We see the rich and the famous who seem to have everything to make them happy end up divorced, addicted to pornography, illicit sex, alcohol and drugs. Not a small number of them commit suicide. There is something missing in their lives without which their lives have no meaning.
People can identify themselves as a university student, a police officer, a next door neighbour, someone’s son or daughter, husband or wife but not have an understanding of who they are as a person. Can they answer for themselves; Where did I come from? What is the purpose of my life? Is there a life after death? Why is there evil in the world? Is there such a thing as objective truth or true justice? Are there consequences for my actions in this life? If so, who will be my judge? Do I believe in God?
In the history of man we discover that most societies believed in some kind of god or a ‘Power greater than themselves’. People established religions to worship the sun or an emperor while others worshipped many gods in the form of the stars or planets, or they made statues of mythical heroes. From this we can reasonably conclude that to be human is to be religious. But, is there a true God and a true religion?
Who is God?
According to the authors of the divinely inspired Scriptures, God is the one, everlasting God, without beginning and without end, He is the First Cause. He is Just, Almighty, all Knowing and all Loving. When He created man, God put into his spirit a desire to know and to be in relationship with his Creator. In the Book of Psalms we read, “O God you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you as in a dry and weary land where no water is.”(Psalm 63) “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?” (Psalm. 42)
According to the Creed of the Catholic Church, we believe in one God, the Father Almighty and in Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son and the Holy Spirit, the giver of life. Three Persons in one God. Many authors over thousands of years have written a record of God’s revelations about Himself and about who we are as human beings. In the Bible He tells us that He is the creator of all things visible and invisible. In His own image He created Adam, the first man and Eve, the first woman. They were composed of body, soul and spirit. We are the descendants of Adam and Eve. God breathed into man His own breath making him a living being with intellect and free will. With his intellect he could come to know God and with his free will he could choose to love the God who loved him first. Out of love, God created all that is in the universe for man, but man God created for Himself. We belong to Him. When God created man He implanted in the human heart a longing to know Him and to seek the God who made him.
God created each person individually out of love. “What is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? You have made him little less than the angels. (Psalm 8:4) “For you formed my inward parts, you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you for I am wonderfully made.” (Psalm 139) God asks, “Does a woman forget her baby at the breast, or fail to cherish the son of her womb? Yet, even if these forget, I will never forget you.” See, I have branded you on the palms of my hands.” (Isaiah 49:15-16)
God also created the angels who are pure spirits with free wills and have superior intellects. Out of pride, led by the angel, Lucifer, some of the angels chose to reject God to become their own gods. They became devils instead and sworn enemies of God. Because of the sin of envy the devils came to also hate man who was made in God’s image and likeness. This hatred led Satan (Lucifer’s new name) to tempt man to also desire to be his own god. He succeeded and man broke his covenant relationship with God through disobedience. Through this sin the man lost his original innocence and the ability to live in God’s presence. We, as the descendants of Adam and Eve, were then deprived from inheriting original innocence and the covenant relationship with God. Henceforth the bodies of all humans would be subject to death and corruption. Our souls however, are spirit and cannot die or experience corruption. Without God and the gift of original innocence man is inclined to sin. It is through the influence of Satan and the sins of men and women that evil has come into the world.
We have a God who is always pursuing us. This void is sometimes called, “the God hole in our heart” and is meant to be filled by the Holy Spirit. If we don’t understand that it is only He who can fill the void in us we try to fill it with something else. We can seek it in a relationship with another person, taking up a cause, acquiring power and fame, or trying to save the world as if we were the messiahs. The emptiness can be painful and in desperation some will become slaves to alcohol, drugs, pornography and illicit sex. None of these things can satisfy this emptiness that we experience. The famous Saint Augustine, expressed it by saying, ”O Lord, my soul is restless until it rests in Thee.”
This great love that God has for us knows no bounds. He made us to know Him and if we come to know Him we will be compelled to return that love. “God is Love and he who abides in love abides in God and God in him.” (1 John 4:16). St Paul tells us, “For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38)
Because God is perfectly just, it was necessary that Adam and Eve be punished and suffer the consequences of their sin. However, in the very process of delivering sentence, God showed how His justice is tempered by His great love and mercy. He promises Adam and Eve that He will send a Messiah, a Savior to redeem mankind. Through Him all sins will be forgiven and our hope to be with God in heaven will be restored. “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord; though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow, though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” (Isaiah. 1:18).
Who is this Messiah?
Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ and the only means for our salvation. “For God so loved the world that he gave His Only Begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” (Jn.3:16) “He who believes in Him is not condemned, he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the Only Begotten Son of God.”(Jn.3:18)
To make reparation for the original sin and for all of the sins of the world, Jesus became a man and endured agony, suffering and a death by crucifixion to satisfy God’s justice. After His death and burial Jesus rose from the dead and thereby He defeated sin and death. He then declared, “I am the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in me even though he die, yet shall he live and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.” (Jn. 11:25-26)
Jesus established His Church and through it He teaches us the way to salvation. He tells us that we can be born again through water and the Spirit and that our sins will be forgiven. In Baptism all of our sins are forgiven and we receive the Holy Spirit into our souls. (Filling the void). “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of sonship. When we cry “Abba! Father!” it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him.” (Romans 8:15-17)
And so, at this point when we ask ourselves, ‘Who am I? We can answer, I am a child of God and an heir to the Kingdom of Heaven.
Outside of a relationship with God, we cannot know who we are or the truth about our purpose and destiny. Jesus, God’s only Son, is God. He tells us that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. When we die, God will be our judge and we will merit either heaven or hell. At the end of the world there will be a resurrection of our bodies from the dead when they will once again be united to our souls.
Each of us has a hole in our heart, that emptiness which we are always trying to satisfy with things that never seem to work. Until we find the answer we cannot experience peace. After His resurrection from the dead, Jesus promised his disciples that He would always be with them, even to the end of the world. He tells them, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” (Jn.14:27)
God made us to know Him, to love Him and to serve Him in this world so that we will be happy with Him forever. If we seek to know God, He will reveal Himself to us. Because He is Love, to know Him will be to love Him. Jesus tells us, “Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” (John.14:1-3)
Scripture quotations are taken from the ‘Revised Standard Version’, Second Catholic Edition