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| The Cathedral in Galway, my hometown |
We believe that God was completely fulfilled, perfectly happy and content, not in need of anything, before God created the universe and the human race. Wouldn’t it make you wonder why God created us at all, since we have proved to be so much trouble? And God would have known about all the trouble we were going to cause. So why did God create us?
Think for a moment of some time when you were very happy about something: the birth of a child, a wedding, or graduation. Usually our instinct is to share our joy. We want someone else to be a part of that happiness. That’s why most people have a big party at to celebrate these occasions, because they want others to share in their happiness. That is one of the reasons why God created us, simply because in his goodness he wanted others to share in his own happiness. And so He created the spirit world, that we understand as the angels and then He created the human race, in order that we could share in his own happiness. The book of Genesis says that we were the last thing that God created which is a biblical way of saying that we were the most important thing, the masterpiece of God’s creation. We are God’s greatest creation! God also created us to be like him, with the ability to love and reason and free choice.
However, there was one ‘catch’ as it were. In order for us to be able to love God we had to be free, so that we could freely choose to love God, otherwise it wouldn’t be real love at all. Real love has to be free, since you can never force someone to love you. You can encourage them, but you certainly can’t force them. Love has to be free or it isn’t love. So God made us with free will, which meant that we would have the freedom to love God and gradually find our way to happiness, or to reject God, which would ultimately mean we would lose the happiness that God had intended for us. It’s a strange paradox. God created us and gave us freedom, even though He knew that some of his own creatures would reject him.
A friend of mine, a very devout Catholic, after he was married and had children, said to me one time that when he looks at his children, he couldn’t believe that God who is so loving would let people go to hell, that God would create hell? How could any parent allow their children deliberately to suffer? But the paradox is that no matter how much you love your children, you cannot force them to love you in return. You know the pain of falling in love with someone who doesn’t love you back, or pushes you away. Hell is the pain that people who reject God end up with, because they reject the only One who can give us total fulfillment. If you push away total happiness, you get total misery. If you reject all joy, then you end up with all pain. That’s what hell is: losing all that can fulfill us and bring us joy. God doesn’t send anyone to hell. We choose it if we reject God. If we have real freedom and heaven is real, then hell must also be real. If heaven was guaranteed for everyone, then we would not be truly free, because to be truly free means we have the choice to love or not to love to accept God or reject God.
I think the most beautiful image we are given of how God loves us, is in the story of the prodigal son. In this story, a father has two sons. One of them demands his inheritance before the father has died, which is the equivalent of wishing him dead to his face. He then goes off, wastes all the family’s hard-earned money and finally comes back to his father ashamed. While the Son has been away, his father is constantly waiting and hoping that he will return and when he does finally return the father just celebrates. There is no giving out, no warning that ‘This must not happen again,’ just celebration and rejoicing. Through the story of the prodigal son Jesus is teaching us how God sees us. No condemnation, only God’s desire for us to find happiness. God only wants us to come to him, to be with him. That is why He created us. God has created us to be with him for eternity and God will make that happen unless we reject God. We accept or reject God by the way we live, by the ongoing choices we make. Jesus says, ‘If you love me you will keep my commandments. (Jn:14-15)
The Lord knows how difficult it can be for us to make the right choices and so He gives us many different ways to guide us: the holy Eucharist, which is the gift of Jesus himself, the Commandments, the teaching of his Church, his own Word in the Scriptures and many other things to help us along the way, so that we won’t be short of the direction and encouragement that we need. God also sends us holy people every so often, like Francis of Assisi, Padre Pio, Therese of Lisieux, Mother Theresa and many others, sometimes people we know, because they radiate God and they are a real sign to us of the Lord’s presence among us. These people seem to radiate God and so many people are drawn to them because they sense that presence. I know of several people who worked with Mother Theresa and it completely changed their life, because they experienced God through her.
The feast of the Holy Trinity is a celebration of divine love. The Holy Trinity is a community of Persons who share total love and joy between them, and this Holy Trinity reaches out to us with that same love and invites us to join them. If we respond to the Father, the Son and the Spirit, then we are gradually drawn more and more into that love. It starts in this world and it will be fulfilled in the next. The greatest way that we imitate God is by loving the people around us, sacrificing ourselves for others. That is what God did for us and that is what God invites us to do for each other.
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
So that everyone who believes in him might not perish
but might have eternal life. (John 3:16)
A man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13)
I often come across people who are afraid that they cannot, or will not be forgiven, because of a sinful past, or mistakes in their past. That is why Jesus used so many stories of forgiveness and mercy, to encourage us and so that we won’t lose heart. God’s mercy is something that we don’t experience from other people, which makes it all the harder for us to grasp. If you think of it this way. God’s only desire for him is to be with him in eternity. That is what God created us for and that is what will happen, unless we reject God. God has done everything possible to make that happen, through the death and resurrection of Jesus, so there is no need for us to be afraid, no matter what we have done.
It is also worth remembering that God is always the one to encourage us, to reassure us and to help us back on our feet no matter what has happened. Satan tries to discourage us. He shames us and accuses us. He says, ‘You are no good, you are a hypocrite, God can never forgive you. There is no hope for you.’ Jesus called him the accuser and it is good to recognize the voices when we are feeling discouraged. Jesus always encourages us.
Yet Jesus also said, ‘Every kind of sin and blasphemy can be forgiven, except blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which will never be forgiven.’ (Mt 12:31).
What does that mean? He said this when the Pharisees were claiming Jesus was healing people by the power of Satan. In other words they were calling God’s love evil.
The Holy Spirit is the love between the Father and the Son. To blaspheme against the Spirit is to reject God’s love. If we reject God’s love, we ourselves are cutting ourselves off from God and God respects the choices that we make. It doesn’t come down to one instance of calling God evil, but a continual rejection of God. But it keeps going back to the same thing: God has created us to be with him and that is what will happen unless we deliberately reject God.
God so loved the world that He gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him may not perish,
but may have eternal life. (John 3:16)
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