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The
Good for Which We Were Made
Fr.
George Smiga
June
2/3 2007
John
16:12 - 15
There
was a bizarre commercial a while back, so bizarre that I cannot
remember what it was selling. In it a teenage girl in wild
attire was intently watching a television screen. On the screen
was a rapid and incoherent succession of colors and images.
When the screen finally went dark she turned and said “I totally
don't understand what that was, but I want it!”
This
strange statement is a passable description of our relationship
to God. We cannot understand God, but we want God. We cannot
understand God because God is totally other, absolute mystery.
Today's feast of the Holy Trinity makes that clear. We are
unable to understand how God could at once be perfectly one
and also distinctly three persons, Father, Son and Spirit.
But our inability to understand God does not prevent us from
wanting God. In fact it would be true to say that we want
nothing else. All we really want is God.
Now
by saying that I am not trying to be pious or implying that
we prefer to spend all our time in church praying. When I
say that all we want is God, I am saying that in our deepest
self, in our heart of hearts, what we ultimately desire is
God. Why is this true? Because this is the way we were made.
St. Augustine probably says this more beautifully than anyone
else. He says, “You have made us, O God, for yourself, and
our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”
What
Augustine is saying is that all through our life, with every
choice we make, with every relationship we develop, with every
dream that we dream, what is driving us forward is our desire
to possess the goodness, the power, the presence of God. Augustine
believes that every good thing we see, every person that we
love, every dream that attracts us is only a reflection of
the ultimate goodness that is God. Therefore, whether we are
aware of it or not, we are always searching, always seeking,
always wanting God.
Now
St. Thomas Aquinas makes the same point from a different angle.
He argues that because we were made for God, we are necessarily
directed towards God. We are hard wired, if you will, to always
choose goodness, because every good thing is a reflection
of God. St. Thomas goes so far as to say that no one ever
chooses evil. We always choose goodness. Now wait a minute,
you say. People choose evil all the time. Yes they do. Thomas
would admit this. But he insists that they never choose evil
as evil. They only choose evil because they perceive it as
good. Evil is not attractive to us. It does not draw us. Only
goodness draws us, because it is a reflection of God's goodness.
That's they way we are made.
So according to Thomas, even people such as Adolph Hitler,
who killed millions of people in an effort to dominate the
world, do not make such choices because they see them as evil.
They perceived them as good. Hitler believed that his slaughter
of Europe was good: good for himself, good for his country,
good for his third Reich. As Hitler reached out for power
in a warped and horrible way, he was nevertheless reaching
out for the power that was ultimately a reflection of the
power of God.
Now
there is no way we can ever condone or accept what Hitler
did. But even in his megalomania, he was sinfully reaching
out for what was good. When he reached out for power in a
sick and unacceptable way, he was perversely reaching out
for God.
Therefore,
the challenge for us is not to desire God. In truth we can
desire nothing else. We are hardwired to reach out always
for what we see as good. The challenge for us is to see correctly,
to reach out not for a false good but for a genuine one, to
reach out for a true good rather than one that is illusionary.
This is why it is so important in today's Gospel that Jesus
sends us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of
truth, the one who will guide us in all truth. It is the role
of the spirit to clarify for us what is genuine goodness and
what is an illusion. It is the Spirit who shows us that when
we make choices based upon greed or selfishness or violence,
they are lies and they will never bring us happiness, even
though they appear to be good. It is the same spirit who shows
us that when we base our life on justice, generosity and love,
we will be making choices and claiming the genuine good that
we so deeply desire.
All
of us ultimately desire God, we cannot help but to do so.
All of us are hardwired to reach out and seize the good that
we perceive in our midst. The challenge for us is to perceive
correctly. Therefore our prayer on this feast of the Holy
Trinity is that the Spirit of God will guide us so that the
good for which we reach, the good to which we commit our lives
may not be a false good but a true one. We pray that the good
which we choose will not be a horror but a blessing, not a
lie but a genuine reflection of the goodness for which our
hearts were made.
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