ACAT 26: The Incarnation

“Incarnation” literally means “taking on flesh.”  Jesus’ Incarnation is that moment when God took on human flesh – fully God, fully human.  As with our discussion of the Holy Trinity, these tenets of the Catholic faith are impossible to state in the kind of factual terms we might use to describe the natural world.  The Catechism is not a scientific proof; it is an outline of what is offered when we accept the invitation to believe.  There are no words or experiences with which to relate supernatural realities beyond our own.  Instead, we are invited to believe in Jesus Christ, God-With-Us, God-Made-Flesh, as proof of God’s love of, and investment in, humanity.

Lesson Seven goes into much useful detail about why the Incarnation took place, and it is well worth reading.  [Link here and search “Lesson 7”].  But what of our annotation for autistic thinkers?  How do we truly make a connection with something this inexplicable, yet – especially at this point in December – visibly depicted everywhere we look?

The Annotated Catechism approaches matters of faith by asking, “What is being described?  How does this pertain to me as an individual, and what is my role?”  Simply: our role is to be human – to have a soul and a body, to have free will and curious intellect, deliberately and individually designed, and given by God.

Within that makeup, however, is the stain we inherited from our ancestors’ disobedience, resulting in a distrust of humanity’s goodness and doubt surrounding God’s designs.  God warned that the consequence of disobedience would be death… not immediately, but instead of enjoying perpetual blessing, disobedience forfeited our bodily protection from pollution, decay and death.

Few reflexes are as primal and universal as the way we recoil in the presence of rot and flinch at imminent death.  “Thriller” films and novels evoke adrenaline for some and horror in others, but the same instinct is at play.  Even as many of us believe firmly that crossing over is the pathway home to God, there is an instinctive bodily opposition to pain, suffering and, ultimately, death.  This brings us to that paradoxical statement we sometimes hear in the course of evangelization: “God was born so that he could die.”  In all truth, that is a good way to sum up the Incarnation.  We also hear that “The sinless Jesus bore the stain of sin for us.”  But what does that mean?

Bishop Thorlak of Iceland was deeply influenced by the theology of Hugh of St. Victor, who explains the Incarnation in systematic terms of God’s desire to break through our barrier of distrust with demonstrable love.  The following insights come from Hugh of St. Victor’s De Sacramentis, Book Two, Part One.

First, some relational definitions.  Since God is Creator of all and Authority over all that is created, He cannot obey, as there is no authority outside Himself.  He cannot be sent forth, as there is none who might send Him.  He cannot choose between right and wrong, because He is Truth and Knowledge itself. And, God cannot die, as He is all in all of all.

Next: Our relationship with God was broken when our first ancestors disobediently ate the fruit which awakened the choice of exploiting God’s goodness for our own, solitary gain.  This gave rise to vice, which is the natural consequence of sin, and brought bodily death upon the human race as the final means by which our disordered inclinations can cease to plague our senses.  Humans have no natural ability to liberate ourselves from this inherited pattern.

God, grieving this consequence, knew that the only way to change this sequence without unraveling the makeup of humanity would be to somehow graft our broken nature back into the Godly line.  The logistical problem is that our nature is human, not Divine; and only God is God.

While humans cannot become God, could God become human?  Technically yes, but that would require his radically changing form and abdicating His Divinity, which would disintegrate all of Creation.  In order to reverse the curse affected by our ancestors, God would need the capacity to freely choose and obey, which (as shown above) is not possible if he remains Divine.

However: A son bears the name and inherited essence of his father.  A son with a human nature can freely choose to obey.  A son can be sent to carry on a father’s mission and values, becoming his de facto representative where he is sent.

Thus, God did not come as Creator to our earthly plane.  He sent His Son, born human of a human mother, with a human soul, free will, and earthly flesh.  Being born of Mary, who was preserved from inherited (original) sin, the Son would not have the same fallen focus self-gratification that other humans have; yet He would physically exist within the parameters of humanity – including subjection to bodily decay and death.

So: God sent a Son, Jesus, bearing His nature, to the womb of a mother free of original sin, so that He could live as a human, and die as a human.  God’s Son would act to reverse our disobedience, completely innocent of any vice but still obedient to the bodily the penalty of sin – death.  It is the equivalent of an innocent man offering to take the sentence of a convicted criminal, and serving it faithfully to its completion.

But… why?

We offer this admittedly oversimplified, but hopefully helpful analogy, addressing the question of God taking on the stain of sin and subjecting Himself to bodily death. Imagine God as an endless body of life-giving water free of all pollution.  When humanity partook of sin, we became splattered and caked with toxic waste, with no way to purify ourselves.  Dwelling directly with the water of God was no longer an option for us as we would poison all of Creation with our presence… but at the same time, that water is the only means by which we can detoxify from the pollution of sin.

How can we solve this conundrum?  We can’t return to Him polluted, and if God Himself were to descend, He, being pure water, would devastate and drown us!  But what if this pure water (God) could supernaturally take human form?  He would be a living, infinite source of life-giving water, simultaneously existing as, and contained by, a physical human body.  As God, He would be free of our pollution… but, would willingly mingle with us, acquiring more of our stain each time He infuses us with life-giving water.  He will dilute our sinful inclinations, that is, our toxicity, to the degree we accept His gift.  Some of us shrink back and say we are too dirty to ever think of mingling with God… some say that pollution is not bad and prefer to remain in the toxic state… and some will draw water from God’s Son again and again, wishing one day to return to that state of grace our ancestors knew before the stain of sin came into our line.  God, for His part, gives without account, as often as we wish, as often as we trust, as often as we accept.  He always invites, and never forces.

[Following our analogy to its conclusion: God’s human body eventually succumbed to the effects of our pollution.  But, being supernatural, it was only the physical, earthly form that died.  God knew that an earthly body could not live forever in our realm, so He made provisions for that in His scenario, which would include resurrection and establishment of a wider body, The Church.  That is an entirely different discussion for future commentary!]

This is all little more than a sketch which cannot compare to the deeper theology at hand.  For here, for now, let us conclude by revisiting our thought, “What is the Incarnation?  How does it pertain to us, and what is our role?”  May we find our answer close in our hearts.

ACAT 22: Sin and Law

Original Sin – Actual Sin – Mortal Sin – Venial Sin

Many people have heard by rote the types of sin “taught” by the Catholic Church.  This line of thinking characterizes the Church as a group of elders who gather to define what constitutes naughty behavior, and who further go on to assign spiritual penalties to such transgressions.  Such ideas go all the way back to the Middle Ages and beyond, and are about as accurate as thinking the public education system invented the alphabet for the purposes of issuing report cards.

No church or religion invented sin.  And, no church or religion “teaches” sin.  The Catholic Church ascribes to the idea that there are metaphysical laws which define the universe in which we live, meaning that God created all things and all creatures with its own purpose and design.  Humans, as you may recall from previous posts, were created and designed to know God, to love God, to receive God’s love and to live harmoniously with the way in which God imagined all people to express and fulfill their talents.  Just as we plan and design our crafts with particular form and function, so too does God create people with intentional design.  The intended form and function of something can be said to be the laws under which that “something” operates.  An automobile has form and function which can vary from car to car but must have certain basic principles met before it is a “good” automobile.  In other words, if a piece of machinery follows the “laws” which makes something an “automobile,” it functions well.  If not, it falters, or fails, or functions as something that does not qualify as an automobile.

The same phrasing can describe humanity.  The “laws” which make something “human” are how well we know God, love God, receive God’s love and respond to God’s intended design.

Sin is the consequence of not following the law… that is, not following God’s intended design.

Thus: Nobody can “invent” sin.  Sin is a state of misalignment.

With that in mind, let us see now the two ways that misalignment occurs:

  • ORIGINAL SIN: The inherited misalignment that originated with Adam and Eve, the first two humans, whose very makeup was altered by their choice to see and know evil;
  • ACTUAL SIN: The choices people make which go against God’s intended design.

The phrase “original sin” is meant to signify that we begin our earthly lives in misalignment, since God’s intended design for humanity was not to know evil.  Yet, once our ancestors chose to do so, it could not be un-seen.  Our lenses no longer pointed solely at God.  Think of it as someone altering the process before it even begins, such that everything coming out has this design flaw, and our minds now have a sharp focus on, and skew toward, things that divide and destroy relationships (since that is, in essence, what evil is – the destruction of our relationship with God).

NOTE!

“Original sin” does NOT mean that God created damaged goods, or that people are set up to fail from birth.  In fact, God provided a correction – a “patch,” if you will – for original sin, and that is baptism.  (We will discuss baptism in greater detail in future posts.)

Another note!

Humans have free will, free choice, and are never coerced or manipulated by God or His Church into doing anything.  If one finds an example of coercion, it is not authentically of God.  Period.

“Actual Sin,” then, is the term used to describe those times when we choose something that is not part of God’s intended design.  As one can imagine, there are degrees of sin which range from accidental to carefully calculated.  The bottom line is, all sin is a deviation from God’s intended design (or, in metaphysical terms, a violation of natural law).

With such a range of degree of sin, can we expect that sin’s consequences are equally variable?

NO.

Earthly, material consequences are variable.  Spiritual consequences are not.  The consequence of every sin is a break in our relationship with God.  Sin disrupts our act of loving God and our ability to receive God’s love.  Each and every time.

ACAT 21: A Study of Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve.

There cannot be many who have not heard some version of the Creation Story.  Adam and Eve are humanity’s notorious duo, the first of our kind and the first to bungle things up.  So numerous are the commentaries on these two that it borders on cliche to find their names in the Catholic Catechism.  Yet, there they are, occupying the entire Lesson Five of the Baltimore Catechism, and likewise, our discussion for this week.

The Church believes Adam and Eve truly existed.  They were created as man and woman were intended to exist, innocent of any corruption, fully expressing the rich gifts of their endowments of body, mind and soul by God, who loved the idea of them into flesh and bone and breath.  Whether or not there was a botanical tree with literal fruit, or a spiritual construct embodied by metaphorical assignment, it is certain that God warned Adam and Eve of “partaking of the knowledge of good and evil.”  God wished to preserve the innocence of the first man and woman by keeping their intellect focused on that which is good, beautiful and true.  Could God have created anything that was evil, ugly or false?  No… but He did create angels with free will, some of whom rebelled and set out to destroy and undermine God’s work.  God likewise gave free will to Adam and Eve.  While allowing them this freedom, he still intended them to live in purity and perfect balance.  There would be no useful reason to follow any of the doings of the renegade angels.

As we know from the story, Eve was tempted by Satan to partake of that knowledge of good and evil, despite God’s warning.  Satan asserted that God’s motive was to keep the man and woman from becoming a threat to God’s omnipotence.  “You will not die if you eat the fruit,” Satan said.  “Rather, you will become like God.”  It was a clever exploitation of human nature: arouse curiosity, plant doubt and watch the rumor spread.  Once Eve ate the fruit, Adam became curious and, using the disobedience of the other person as his rationale, followed suit.  Part impulse, part calculated risk, part willingness to listen to a voice sowing seeds of distrust… our ancestors’ eyes were opened.  Innocence was spoiled.  Now, instead of seeing the good and the beautiful and the true, they saw it in terms of every way it could be perverted, distorted, exploited and ruined.

Horrified, Adam and Eve no longer felt safe.  If goodness and beauty and truth could be corrupted, what guarantee did anyone have of anything?  What once was seen in abundance suddenly became scarce.  The present was no longer enough.  Security became risk.  In the presence of evil, God no longer seemed sufficient.  In short: FEAR was introduced into humanity.

Our previous posts have emphasized a consistent theme: 1 John 4:18.  Perfect love casts out all fear.  And, in Adam and Eve, we see the inverse at work: fear deprives us of perfect love.

In the story, Adam and Eve cower in fear as they comprehend what they have done, and they can’t un-see the evil they now know.  They understand why God instructed them to leave that fruit alone.  What will God think?  How could he love them now?  Fear and doubt paralyze their once clear intellect.  To make things worse, Adam and Eve now realize their very bodies can be used in perverse and corrupt ways, compared to the innocence and majesty of purpose they knew before seeing the ugliness of gluttony, lust and gratification.  They covered themselves in shame.

Of course God knew what happened.  With great sorrow, God watched His beloved man and woman fall away.  Their responses betrayed them.  Even God’s all-encompassing love fell into doubt in their minds.  Fear gripped Adam and Eve… and they could not bear the perfect love of God.  Perfect love casts out all fear… and so, Adam and Eve, enslaved by fear, were cast out on their own.

God did not abandon Adam and Eve.  He continued loving them and all of their descendants no less than perfectly.  With the institution of fear, however, humanity remains separated from God by the degree to which that fear holds sway over our minds.

Is there any hope for redeeming humanity’s relationship with God?  Yes.  In fact, God began laying the foundation for that redemption almost immediately.  Through promises and covenants with the ones who trusted Him in spite of this primal fall, God led the way for the eventual birth of Jesus, the act through which God would become human himself and go before us in a story that would reverse every misstep of Adam and Eve, eventually taking on every conceivable fear and facing it himself in an incomprehensible demonstration of solidarity and desire to restore faith in Divine Love.

Remember, our task here is to annotate the Baltimore Catechism in ways that speak to the contemporary autistic mind.  The Baltimore Catechism does a thorough job of explaining the “what” of the fall of humanity from grace.  We aim, with the help of St. Thorlak’s theology of merciful love, to explain “why” – because, without a sense of why, the Catechism reads increasingly like a book of arbitrary rules… which speaks little to autistics and non-autistics alike.

Reference: Lesson Five, Questions 39-49.

 

ACAT 20: Angels 101

Lesson Four of the Baltimore Catechism turns now toward God’s creatures.  The first two questions review:

  1. Q: Who created Heaven, Earth and all things?

A: God.

  1. Q: How did God create Heaven and Earth?

A: God created Heaven and earth from nothing, by His word; that is, a single act of His will.

Now it gets a little more interesting.

  1. Q: Which are the chief creatures of God?

A: The chief creatures of God are angels and humankind.

  1. Q: What are angels?

A: Angels are pure spirits without a body, created to adore and enjoy God in Heaven.

  1. Q: Were angels created for any other purpose?

A: The angels were also created to assist before the Throne of God and to minister unto Him; they have often been sent as messengers from God to humanity; and are also appointed our guardians.

  1. Q: Were the angels, as God created them, good and happy?

A: The angels, as God created them, were good and happy.

  1. Q: Did all the angels remain good and happy?

A: All the angels did not remain good and happy; many of them sinned and were cast into Hell; and these are called devils or bad angels.

Angels are certainly well-depicted in pop culture.  As most imagery goes, angels are large, winged, human-like creatures said to come down from the heavens.  They can be visible or invisible, and are most often (but not always) benevolent.  Pop culture’s angels are the celestial counterpart to fairies, who are smaller, winged, human-like creatures said to rise from the earth and can likewise be seen, unseen, kindly or malicious.

The Baltimore Catechism speaks of none of these attributes, instead stating that God created the angels for His delight in Heaven.  Implied in questions 32-38 are several points of note:

  • Heaven and Hell are separately delineated, and exist
  • Angels are of high importance
  • Angels exert influence on humanity

Let us look now systematically at the attributes which the Catechism names regarding angels.

  • Angels are pure spirits, without bodies, created to exist in the Heavenly realm. This negates most of the popular imagery people have come to expect when discussing angels.  People cannot be angels, nor do loved ones become angels when they die.
  • Angels exist to adore and enjoy God. At first, it may sound arrogant to think that God created angels “to adore him.”  That word, adore, means to deeply and profoundly love and respect another.  In the absence of context, it seems like quite the power trip for an all-perfect Creator to design beings specifically for adoring him.  However, we do have context.  We suggest in recent posts that God is the essence of love itself, and his acts of creation are his uncontainable love taking on living expression.  Angels are no exception.  If God creates for the sake of loving the created, then how do we expect his creatures to respond?  Also: Nowhere does it say that God demands angels’ love.  In fact, just a few lines later we will find some angels rejecting God, which negates the idea that God controls angels like puppets.
  • Angels assist and minister to God. In the context of love, this also flows logically.  “Minister” here means “attend to the needs of someone.”  When existence begins with love and is sustained by love, we can guess that those who assist and minister do so freely, happily and willingly.  No coercion here.  The bigger question is, what could God – all-powerful, all-seeing, all-knowing – possibly need?  Again, the context of love provides an answer.  Love, by itself, can exist; but love cannot stagnate.  Love needs a beloved, and needs to give to that beloved.  Could the angels’ role in ministering to God be… to allow themselves to be loved by embracing God’s love?  With what we’ve discussed about God so far, that seems to be the only answer that makes sense without needing immediate exception and qualification.
  • Angels communicate with and defend humanity. Here is where most of us imagine angels as winged messengers and celestial warriors.  There are numerous instances in Sacred Scripture where “an angel of God” appears, yet there are no concrete descriptions given, nor is it explained if the words imparted are spoken and heard aloud or more intuitive and interior.  The angels’ role in defending humanity is the source of the Catholic tradition that each person has a dedicated guardian angel.  While this is not meticulously outlined in Sacred Scripture, the one passage which implies this very clearly is Matthew 18:10, where Jesus says, “See that you not look down upon any child; their angels always see the face of My Father.”  It is noteworthy that Jesus gives this reference without any further need of clarification or explanation; it is merely a given.
  • Angels are created fundamentally good and happy, but have the capacity to rebel and become devils, cast into Hell. Talk about foreshadowing!  In the midst of the “angel facts” section, the Catechism tosses in both “devils” and “Hell” – two concepts that have not yet been discussed in any context.  Will this topic get more due in later lessons?    But for now, consider this as both preview and basic introduction.  Devil, here, refers to a creature with destructive and hostile intentions.  Hell is a spiritual state of torment and suffering.  There is no reason at this point to define “hell” as a mappable geographic location where flames, pitchforks and sulfur make up the landscape.  It is sufficient to think that God’s realm is infused with the benefits of loving and being loved.  Who could reject or doubt God’s perfect love?  It would have to be only the most hostile and destructive creatures, indeed; and such creatures would deny themselves any comfort of loving and being loved.  With the opposite of love being fear, “hell” is no doubt a dreadful state of being in a constant sense of terror, abandonment and untended suffering.  But, again, these topics will get more attention later on.

This entire topic seems by itself an interesting study in God’s creatures.  However, it sets the stage for understanding what the Catholic church teaches about the roots of good and evil in the tangible world we live in.  Though the existence of angels and devils remains unseen and cannot readily be proven using the scientific method, accepting their existence does provide a logical foundation for much of what is to come.  For many, it is a stretch.  For all, it is why we call it “faith.”

ACAT 18: God’s Governing Style

In exploring God’s infinite perfection, the Baltimore Catechism leads us to three more attributes to ponder, and all in one sentence.  Question 20 of Lesson Two explores the style in which God governs his creation by asking if God is just, holy and merciful.  The answer given is a threefold, interrelated “yes,” with each attribute explicitly defined:

Just: Providing what is deserved, whether merit or punishment

Holy: Exalted in goodness

Merciful: Less exacting than justice demands

The Baltimore text gives an example of a judge in a court of law who is motivated by wisdom and virtue.  A criminal found guilty in this court will be sentenced according to what is right – no more, no less.  Occasionally, circumstance will arise where the person’s guilt is mitigated by factors beyond control, such as impaired thinking, ignorance of the law or extreme and immediate need.  In such cases, a just judge would show mercy by overriding the typical sentence with something more fitting, and in no way does this suggest the judge is corrupt or bending any rules.  A just judge follows the rules.  A holy judge asks what is morally right.  A merciful judge considers each person’s humanity and frailty, and keeps or adjusts decisions based on what will lead that person to a better way of life.

When taken together, these three attributes form a solid platform of checks and balances.  Any overreliance on one detracts from the ability of the others to achieve their intention.  God’s justice is no less real than God’s mercy, yet neither dominate, nor do they switch off and on.  All three operate simultaneously at any given moment: justice and mercy bound together in holiness.  However many sermons, books and homilies may focus on one aspect over the other, the reality is a constant, perfect and simultaneous triad.

Our post last week considered God in the spiritual tradition of St. Thorlak, which portrays Him against the backdrop of His purpose, which is LOVE.  God brought creation into existence with love, through love and for love… so, it ought to follow that God governs creation likewise: with love, through love and for love.  This is where we can find a solution among those who assert one aspect of God’s governance over another (that is, the fire-and-brimstone image on the one hand, and the none-are-ever-condemned image on the other).  LOVE is what motivates and binds justice, holiness and mercy into one cohesive truth.  1 John 4:18 shows how this works:  “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.”  If God is wrathful, there is reason to be afraid – either fearing God’s punishment for what we have done, or fearing that we can never reach or maintain a level of goodness to stay in the safe zone out of God’s way.  Likewise, if God holds none of us to any standard of virtue, nothing in any other part of the catechism, or any religious teaching, makes sense.   Some will say that Jesus’ death erased sin and guarantees salvation for all, even to the point of eliminating the concept of hell or damnation.  That also fails to hold up under scrutiny and test, and it gives rise to a different kind of fear – that of everyone making up their own rules, justifying themselves without consequence, and gradually losing sight of the common good.

Perfect love casts out fear.  If God is the essence of love, there ought to be no fear or chaos in God’s governance.  The triad of justice and mercy bound by holiness is perfectly balanced, with neither fear of wrath nor moral chaos.  Loving justice defends those who are abused and restores what is taken by holding abusers accountable.  Loving mercy considers those who stand accused and invites them to choose the better way before the evil of their actions is locked in.  Both exist simultaneously.  Nobody loses.  Those who decline God’s invitation to holiness reap the fullness of justice… and, those who accept God’s invitation to holiness reap the fullness of mercy.

ACAT 17: A Concept of God

Lesson Two of the Baltimore Catechism outlines the characteristics of God which most of us have heard in one way or another.  Most of these qualities are beyond anything we can relate to in human terms:

  • Spiritual
  • Perfect
  • Infinite
  • Without beginning
  • Without end
  • Everywhere
  • All-seeing
  • All-knowing
  • All-powerful

Without anything like this in our concrete reality, it falls to our imaginations to construct our idea of God.  That presumes, however, that we have a well-functioning imagination.  Many of us do not, and even who do still find this far past the range of speculation.  It often seems that our concept of God comes out like the mythical gods of long ago: Giant, thunderous, demanding, frightful in abject perfection (with ourselves, by comparison, looking like wretched fools or worse). In other scenarios, God ends up like a forerunner of Santa Claus, a benevolent grandfather figure who sees everything we do, knowing all that we feel, think and say, and exists to dispense gifts to us based on our merit.  Imagining God can feel like living in a snow globe, existing solely for God’s amusement – or abandonment when He tires of watching us.  It gets to be such absurdity that we eventually dismiss the whole thing as either too big to imagine, or outright fiction.  Autistics particularly struggle with the contradiction of concrete realities which consist of abstract qualities.  Perhaps, then, we might start with the implications of God rather than trying to comprehend His descriptions.  St. Augustine took this approach in his teachings, and over the centuries, he would influence many others, including our own St. Thorlak.  How did he – a scholar, and also a likely autistic – present these heady realities of God to the medieval Catholics of Iceland, few of whom were literate, all of whom labored day and night to survive on fishing and farming in an unreliable and punishing climate?

Thorlak’s intellectual leaning was a peculiarity to his fellow Icelanders, including those at the Oddi, the center of Icelandic scholarship.  He found his niche 1,359 miles (2,187 km) abroad, studying theology at the renowned Abbey of St-Victor in Paris.  He never intended to subsist on academia, though.  Thorlak was eager to return to his homeland with the mission of bringing this marvelous knowledge of God to those unable to pursue theology.  And, in the way many fellow autistics have of drawing out profoundly simple yet powerful solutions to confounding complexities, Thorlak showed a way to see the unseeable God by using the backdrop of His purpose: LOVE.

In that manner, then, let us employ the Catechism’s list of attributes to understand not a demanding deity, not an indifferent toymaker in the sky, but One who embodies and defines the essence of love.

We, being human, have the limits of our minds and senses; thus, the first three attributes reflect the limits to how we can know God.  God is spiritual, perfect and infinite.  Spiritual suggests He exists within the interior and unseen realm, the experience itself of being.  One of the earliest translations of “spirit” is “breath.”  We can think of God as the breath that says “yes” to all that has existed, exists now, and will exist far beyond our participation.  Perfect means complete, whole, without flaw.  Infinite: God encompasses the totality of all that is.  Since creation is very much alive and unfolding, that totality is not finished, nor can we comprehend how far back it goes or how far ahead it will go on.

Without beginning, without end… everywhere… all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful: These are, in one sense, embellishments on the notion of being infinite.  God’s essence and intentionality infuses and sustains all creation, which includes us and the world around us and the universe in which our world exists.   But more specifically, these reflect the intentionality of God.  He exists not just to exist, but to be, see, know and act.  Why?

What if the answer is love?  If God is love’s very essence, then creation is the expression of joy so ripe that it had to be given form.  The “love” that is God is that creative love underpinning the interests which propel our spirits.  God’s love is no mere greeting card sentiment.  God’s love is all-consuming, all-knowing, all-seeing and without end.  God’s love of the very notion of humanity and earth and universe, and all its intricacies, is indistinguishable from God Himself, and exceeds the capacity of God to remain statically fixed or detached.  It is such a burning drive that God, unable to be contained, brought it all into being to experience it.

Repeat: God did not simply imagine us.  The delight He took in imagining us was so consuming that He was moved to experience us.  Hence, God actively sees, knows and empowers what He has given form and substance.

Autistics know the difference between thinking about something and experiencing that intense rapture which drives us, draws us forward, consumes our minds and feels like the meaning of life itself.  Onlookers call this our “special interest.”  We go along with that terminology because it avoids degrading our joy into something pejorative, like “obsession,” but it grossly dismisses how greatly that joy affects us.  (To the point, who would ever gaze upon a loved one and whisper, “You are my special interest?”)

With “love” as God’s backdrop, we see that he is neither dictator nor spy in the sky.  God supplies all, designs all and sustains all because He is love which cannot be contained.

This may still be too much to comprehend or believe, especially when we look around and see everything that is NOT love.  Where did all the mess come from, and why does God not step in and clean it up for us?  We will continue this discussion as we explore more of the Catechism.  In the meantime, let us recall that list in answer to the question, “In what manner does God love us?”

Spiritually.  Perfectly.  Infinitely.  Without beginning or end.  Everywhere.  Seeing and knowing all, and loving us with all His power.

ACAT 9: What Happens if We Neglect Our Soul’s Care?

If care for our soul means knowing, loving and serving the purposes of God in our lives, neglect would be those times when we disregard opportunities to know God, love God or serve God’s purposes in the things we ordinarily do.  Sometimes this happens through circumstance and chain reaction, very often because “God-things” are not immediately visible and get pushed aside by the visible, tangible things taking up all of our attention first.  It takes lifelong practice to remember that God is invisibly present in everything, as present as the atmosphere which sustains us, and there will be times when it simply slips our minds.  The more often we can call God back to mind, the stronger our foundation becomes for remembering His presence and incorporating God into our conscious activity; but, realistically, there are always going to be times when other concerns of the moment occupy our minds first.

Neglect is not always a passive thing, however.  Sometimes we neglect things purposefully, like when we ignore incoming calls or let the laundry pile up.  Neglect can equally be a function of habit, or avoidance, or even a deliberate act of aggression – such as choosing not to follow through on something we have promised.

What happens when we neglect God’s presence in our lives?

Neglect in any relationship results in growing apart, loss of familiarity, loss of comfort, and loss of trust.  These things can all be gained and rebuilt again, but if continuously neglected, the gap becomes greater and greater, eventually creating unfamiliarity, discomfort and distrust.

As we go further, we realize that, if God created us and is present in all creation, it is not possible for Him to be unfamiliar, uncomfortable or distrustful with us.  It rests entirely on our shoulders to remember Him.

Following the spectrum described above, neglect can range from gradually, even accidentally forgetting God to deliberately turning away.   The effect is the same, regardless: loss of spiritual connection and purpose.

What happens if we lose our spiritual connection and purpose?

Plenty.  For starters, waking up in the morning gets harder and harder.  People around us get more and more tedious.  Tasks feel fruitless.

This sounds a lot like depression, but is it the same thing?  We know that depression is caused by biochemical imbalance resulting from many different contributing factors, sometimes spontaneously and sometimes from depletion due to chronic distressing.  But in both cases, imbalance results because our bodies are not designed to live like this.  It is just as untrue to say that all depression is spiritually caused as it is to think that spiritual unrest can’t happen in perfectly healthy bodies.  Body and soul work together for the same purpose, like harmonious melodies in the same composition.  So, it is fair to say that a loss of spiritual connection and purpose results in hardship on both body and soul.

When we find life pointless, we stop thriving.  We also tend to dry up in terms of what we might have to offer others around us.

This might just be enough to say that neglect of the soul is not a good thing.  The Baltimore Catechism goes us one step further: it says that chronic neglect puts us at risk of losing our soul forever.  This, again, would be the result of our failure to cultivate and maintain that connection to God.  He relies on us to stay connected with Him in our lifetime so that we will want to see Him face to face in the next.  If we grow unfamiliar, uncomfortable and distrustful now, we’re definitely going to shrink away from any idea of spending eternity with Him.

But, if not with God, who holds all creation together in Himself… then… where?

In losing our soul, we lose God and everlasting happiness.

That remains unknown.  We can’t know where we will be.

In other words, our soul will be lost.

ACAT 6: Happy with God in the Next World

The Baltimore Catechism has told us that God exists, is the creator of all life, and desires to have us here to know him, love him and serve him… and then, to be happy with him forever in the next.

If we notice, our catechism takes quite a jump from “why are we here?” to “where do we go from here?” in that last clause of the sentence.  We go from knowing God, deciding we love him and choosing to follow his designs to then reaching bodily death, at which time the terms become: <we will be happy> / <with God> / <forever> / <in the next world>.

1) We will be happy

Keeping in mind the Baltimore Catechism was written with school-aged children in mind, this word “happy” should be taken at face value.  We can interpret this in the most simple way, a shortcut for the sum total of things that include contentment, peace, delight, freedom from anxiety and, generally, anything we’d tag with a smile emoji… only, on a much deeper, more fulfilling level than the things that we’re used to, that last only until they fade or the next good thing comes along.  This is an enduring happiness, a perpetual contentment, a rest of the soul that once was restless.

2) + with God

Does our bodily death free us from the spiritual signal-blocker that keeps us from seeing God face to face?  Does bodily death transport the soul from here where God is not, to there, where God is?  These things cannot be satisfactorily defined or studied, and so, the particulars of what physically constitutes the afterlife remains up for both scientific and theological discussion.   It is, however, a term of our faith that we believe, in some capacity, that our soul remains alive and is able to perceive God with the certainty and clarity which our bodily existence cannot permit.  We concede the “what,” knowing we do not have a definitive way to describe the “how.”

3) + forever

As theologians understand the reality of God’s creation, there is both linear, measured time here on earth and a transcendental, non-measurable state of “just being” that is so vast and deep as to defy linear tracking.  That word “forever” can evoke anxiety when it is something of an unknown quality.  Even though the terms already include being “happy,” there is a permanence to this “forever” that triggers a second-guessing in our human nature.  We are conditioned to know where our exits are, how the escape hatch works, and how to tolerate being stuck by anticipating that things will eventually change.  The key here is to remember that God’s “forever” is not static.  God’s reality is one of constant creation, perpetual beginning, perfect stability and all-encompassing security.   This “forever” is more like the state we find ourselves in when we finally hit our stride and want to keep going.

4) + in the next world

Ah, the afterlife.  So many connotations, so many explanations, so many words.  The term “heaven,” for instance, originated in the ancient belief that souls travel beyond the bonds of earth’s atmosphere, into the firmament, to join ranks with the stars.  We have modernized this concept to also mean “perfect bliss” or “supreme pleasure.”  But “heaven” is not the only way to refer to the afterlife.  Our catechetical writers refer to “the next world.”  What does this mean?  In the purest sense, “world” means a specified environment containing the sum total of interactions and experiences therein.  “The next world” can mean both the place itself and the way we experience it, just as in gaming there are many successive worlds in which the same player can interact in different and increasingly sophisticated ways.  The takeaway here is that, once our soul is separated from our body, our experiences and interactions do not cease; rather, they continue, in a manner which we can only access once we graduate to that level.

And so, there it is.  God created us, and offers us to live and use our life in this world to discover him, and consider offering our love and support of him in response.  Those of us who do will experience him here and then receive the happiness he offers us with him in the world to come.

We conclude with a brief parable attempting to explain the principle like so:

If this world is a forest, and we are each a tree, the forest is that which nurtures tree growth, and no tree diminishes another’s importance.  God imagines us, tree after tree, with great love, and places us in this forest to be both delightful as ourselves and to be delightful to the other trees.  Once we have grown to fullness, we can see what we, and each other tree is to become.  The trees who embrace being trees of the forest will thrive in the fulfillment of their design.  The trees who doubt can choose not to remain, but by this choice, they may still become something useful – but they can no longer fulfill what their creator imagined they would one day be.

ACAT 4: The Process of Relating to God

[Readers, please note: Ordinarily, the respect due to God is expressed by capitalizing the H in pronouns.  However, writing about familiarity in relationship requires a lot of these pronouns – and that capital H is becoming distracting.  God deserves respect, yes; but he does not demand it to the point of distraction.  We considered what it would mean to drop the capitalization in favor of increasing comfort and familiarity, and it feels right.  We mean no disrespect to God by using lowercase pronouns.  We offer it to God, in love, as a sign of our desire to grow closer in familiarity with him, intending no offense.]

Last week, we began looking at the Baltimore Catechism’s proposal that God created us to know him, love him, serve him and be happy with him in the life to come.

We suggested seeing this first as a task list given in order of importance, with each step intended to prepare us for the next, flowing with a natural logic.  We can’t love someone without knowing them.  We can’t serve someone without loving them (and, before any buzz starts, we already have Missionary Thoughts lined up to go more deeply into that word “serve,” especially wondering how it can lead to happiness when it sounds so contractual).

Yes, each step is a foundational block, and each successive step builds further on the previous one.

But it is not a flat, linear progression.  It is a dynamic process, a progression of modules leading one to the next and then building upward, constantly adding more layers for each completion of the cycle, day after day in our lifetime.  The four together are a constant, living process.

 

 

 

 

This process, in fact, describes building a relationship with anyone:

 

When an enduring relationship is forming, what we discover about someone (= getting to know them) eventually gives rise to a particular fondness.  We can feel this as we feel love toward our family members, or toward our friends, or in the general sense of the value and dignity we feel toward others.  But then, we begin to concretely “love” in the verb sense by showing affection, or speaking affirming words, or including people in our activities as we might invite a friend, a guest or someone on the sidelines without a partner to participate in what we are doing.  We love by giving gifts, making food and welcoming visitors.  Loving can be offering to drive somewhere, or answering the phone when we are already tired, or forgiving those who overstep their boundaries with us.  If we notice, knowing (taking in concrete, measurable data) gives way to loving (forming an abstract conclusion) which gives way to doing, or serving (concrete action motivated by abstract feeling).

Thus, loving forms the bridge between knowing and doing (or, serving), which leads to being happy with each other in the relationship.  As each module augments the other in the process, a foundation is formed.  The process repeats and repeats and repeats in the rhythm of the relationship, as though placing bricks one atop the other in an ever-growing structure.

 

So, how easily can we replicate this process when our someone (God) is not three-dimensional?

Knowing: Books, videos, homilies and Scripture are some of the many formal ways we can know God, but evidence and ideation of God occurs frequently and much less formally.  Imagination can be the best tool for us to encounter God interiorly and to make deeply personal and emotionally relevant observations that will help us know him better.

Loving: Can we yet sit back and reflect on what we are reading, what we are hearing about God, what we see in creation around us, through natural beauty and the love of animals, and feel a connection with – even a fondness for –  God?  Maybe so… or, maybe not yet.  Maybe it comes and goes.  If all we do is believe he is there, eventually, we’ll find him… but only if we pay him attention and remember to include him.  He is just like any one of us who are not easily seen or heard above the others in the room.  Silence does not mean he is not interested and not participating in our lives.

Serving: Moving from the abstract toward the concrete, how can we enact our love of God by responding to what we know about him?  How are we to know what delights him, what needs he has, or what he might ask as a favor?  We can’t give God rides to the store, or buy him gifts, or make him dinner.  We can’t listen to his hard day’s work stories or let him stay an hour past when we told him we had to go.  However, in Matthew 25:35, Jesus says, “When you do it for the least among you, you do it for ME.”  We can love God by loving his proxy, the person in front of us.  Service becomes a tool to discover and express our love, not a mandate – but more on that next week!

Being Happy With God:  Relationships take time.  Few of us are ever lovestruck instantaneously, but rather, we cultivate familiarity and comfort by giving our attention to knowing others here and there until they becomes part of our everyday and less an awkward silence in our lives.  The same is true of God.  Loving God means feeling the comfort of his being silent with us the way we welcome our friends to be silent with us… and to let us comfortably be silent with them.

ACAT 3: Why are we here?

Now there is a loaded question, and one asked in many senses.  Why are we “here” – right here, right now, in these circumstances?  Why are “we” here – why us?  And why does God wire some people to have autism?  Is it preplanned?  Is it a deliberate system hack embedding a hidden superpower?  Is it a functional design flaw?  Is it a variation?  Or is it out of God’s hands, the result of some consequence of the imperfections we must accept living in a fallen world?

“God does not make mistakes!” is often heard where such questions arise.  We could rightly spend pages and pages looking at the theology of variation, of suffering and healing; and just as rightly strive to characterize autism as a state of being that includes both strength and weakness.  Autism does not predict happiness or success any more than eye color or shoe size, nor does it suggest propensity toward or immunity from the suffering that comes with the human condition.  Life is hard.  Life with autism is hard.  But so is life with size ten shoes.  Perhaps it is good to look at why God created any of us, and then consider how our individual variations fulfill that purpose.

Question Six of Lesson One of the Baltimore Catechism may be the best known, most-memorized line of the entire book.  Why did God create people? To know Him, to love Him, to serve Him in this world, and to be happy forever with Him in the next.

What does all that mean?  Why does that leave a lot of people feeling dissatisfied, unsettled, even angry?

Let’s be real.  If we read it with 21st century eyes, we are likely to think God is a narcissist who created us to admire Him and do His bidding.  And then, as we pull that thought out further, we consider all the things we are asked to do in the name of God and religion – like pray, go to Mass, and deny ourselves pleasures because God says they are sinful – and many of us want out before we even get started.  Add in the hard stuff, and it really starts to look like God has a cruel streak!

The answer to these, and all other such concerns, can be found by knowing God.  Like a list of ingredients, the item named first is done so to emphasize its importance: God made people, first and foremost, to know Him.  God fashioned our combination of body and soul so that we might consider who He is and what He is like.  No matter what issues or doubts we have, this is where we need to start.

How do we know God?  How do we KNOW anyone?  There are hundreds of ways, each with their own level of depth and detail.  The origin of the word “know” suggests it is an act of comparing and contrasting, matching up similarities and distinguishing between differences.   Knowledge can come through observation, pondering, reading, listening, discussing and doing.  For those of us on the spectrum, factual knowledge is usually our strength.  Knowing someone is a little more complicated: it requires proximity, social engagement and the ability to interpret the experience, whether through direct contact, observation or imagination.  It’s hard enough to do that with the people around us.  How can we engage with someone who is invisible, intangible and immeasurable?

Well, maybe it’s not THAT difficult.  Just last week, in spelling out attributes of the human soul, we said: “Each person has a unique, essential spirit… that is invisible, intangible and immeasurable – but is expressed through all that we feel and all that we do.”  Come to think of it, those invisible, intangible and immeasurable elements ARE how we know others!

AS WE CAN COME TO KNOW OTHERS, SO WE CAN COME TO KNOW GOD

Realistically, knowing others still relies on our five senses taking in data that is tangible and measurable.  By seeing the actions, hearing the words and participating in the actions of others, we come to know their character.  It takes significantly more detective work to know someone we cannot see, hear or physically engage with.

We really ought not to go any further in our assumptions or conclusions until we give this knowing a fair shot.  It may take us awhile.  What many people find helpful is not to look forward, but to look backward, back to a time when we might remember experiencing something that reminded us of God, or something someone said was what God is like.  Most of us have some kind of notion of “God” from our early childhood, either from what we are taught or what we pick up from what we’ve seen and heard along the way.  Many of us remember something that caused us to stop and feel a tremendous sense of awe, or wonder, or wish, that reached beyond ourselves and our senses into that unseen, unknown realm which we intuitively know is there but we just as intuitively know that nobody can see… yet.

If “knowing” is comparing and contrasting, we might do just as well to think of a time in our past when we felt like hiding, or shrinking away, or suddenly covering up something we love because we have a need to protect that love.  Those are the moments autistic people know best when someone else makes a comment or a statement (or worse) that pierces a moment of our most oblivious joy with the sharp pain of their ridicule or misunderstanding.

What is it that gets pierced?  What is it misunderstood, or ridiculed?  Is it us, our very selves?  Or is it that sense of joy, or insulation, or innocence, or immersion in something we love to the point of losing ourselves into it?  Most of us would agree it is not us, per se, but the love we feel which is ridiculed.

Maybe we cannot sense God when things are running smoothly and people are treating us well.  But when we are hurt, what is it that hurts?  What is it that we seek after when we hurt, in our earliest childhood? It is an invisible, intangible, immeasurable something.  Maybe we can’t define it, but boy, do we feel the pain when it gets injured.  That innocent wonder which is wounded when love is ridiculed – it certainly fits the description we’re going for.  Could that be God, or God’s likeness, or God’s echo?

Our closing point before we keep going next week: The progression of “why are we here?” goes from knowing God to loving God.  “LOVE” is not something that can be forced, faked or coerced.  The writers of the Catechism know that.  It follows that we cannot love anyone we do not know.  Before we get wrapped up in conclusions, let us stay where we need to be in the progression: let us strive to KNOW God, and trust that the rest will flow from there.  If we are facing an obstacle to engaging with our faith, go back to the beginning.  Worry about nothing else until we can say, confidently, that we KNOW God.  Nothing else will work until that connection is working.