One day recently I was walking on a neighboring farm road that stretched out through empty fields when a Honda three-wheeled ATV appeared with a young man standing at the handlebars. Its driver, the young, 12-year-old son of a neighbor farmer, pulled up beside me asked in the most matter of fact way: “Do you believe in God?” Taken aback, I replied that I did believe in God, and asked him if he believed in God. He replied “yes,” and drove away. I was left to ponder.
God talk does not come easy to Catholics. “Who is God?” The Catholic Baltimore Catechism, the popular compendium of Catholic truth in use till the 1960s, asks. “God is the Supreme being who made all things,” is the reply. The catechism entertains no doubt in the matter, everything is cut and dried. The fact that such concepts, have almost no connection with the Church’s prayer life is left unsaid.
But then, conversation about the infinite God has never been easy. The Hebrews in the Old Testament described God with different titles: Elohim, Adonai, but never Yahweh, a name considered too sacred to be said aloud. Early Christian art was no better. For almost a thousand years, Western Christian artists avoided depictions of God, someone too mysterious and transcendent to be graphically rendered. And when God is first shown, he is depicted minimally as a human hand, or an eye peering through the clouds. Only in renaissance art does the divinity appear in human form. In his Sistine Chapel ceiling of creation, the figure of God the Father reaching out to touch Adam, is a strong, older man with intense eyes, and swept back, white hair. But it is an exception. After the 1500s the images recede, and the eye of God persists in church art through the centuries that follow.
But if there is a poverty of graphical representation of the Supreme Being, the Church has never hesitated to describe him in words. In vivid poetic language, Scriptures portrays him as a Lord of the gentle wind, of the stars, of armies in battle array, the source of wisdom, loyalty, and truthfulness. All powerful, He weds heaven and earth, and the divine to the human.
The Church’s liturgical prayer, gathered through the centuries, amplifies these notions: God, is heavenly father, all knowing, all present, loving, just, eternal. God is the creator, the sustainer, the pardoner, caring, compassionate and slow to anger, he is refuge, shepherd, savior, and king. He is the strength and protection of his people.
In the life of the Church, God is far more than notional: his presence is woven into the church’s sacramental actions. The heavenly Father receives the offering of the Eucharist made in Christ’s name. God is the giver of gifts: He provides the water we use in baptism he blesses the oils with which we are anointed and the light of our candles, He gives fruitfulness to our fields embodied in the bread and wine, God cleanses us of our sins, joins us together as a community of prayer, and speaks to us in his Holy Word.
In our life of personal prayer, God is with us. It is God to whom we pray for someone or ask for help in need. It is this God that at the hour of our death we plead that he hold us in the palm of his hand and under the shadow of his wing. And it is this God, the unnamable, the unapproachable, the infinite mystery that we dare to call “Our Father.”
The boy in the fields had asked me if I believed in God, and I gave him a threadbare answer, ignoring the faith I live as opposed to the faith that I think. There was so much more that I could have said.
