10. The Unity of God

Today’s Meditation on Christian Dogma is called “The Unity of God.” It was submitted by Sister Mary Claire and her little sister Kathy from Camp Littlemore Farm, and comes from their very old book, Meditations on Christian Dogma by Father James Bellord, first published in the 19th century. Sister Mary Claire received the book as a gift from an elderly nun friend in County Kilkenny, Ireland, and she treasures it dearly.

The Unity of God

I. The next great truth after the existence of God is His Unity. “Know that the Lord He is God, and there is no other besides Him” (Deut. iv. 35). This is a wonderful and a necessary perfection. There is a striking grandeur in the idea of a One, sole, supreme, unequalled Being. The Gentile multiplication of gods was ignoble and debased; it was destructive of the very idea of the supreme infinite God as revealed by Moses and Our Divine Lord. Sovereignty, omnipotence, infinity, perfection, independence are meaningless terms as soon as we attempt to conceive them as divided amongst a number of equal beings. Supremacy is necessarily vested in one or it does not exist. The multiplication of beings is an acknowledgment that no one of them is absolutely perfect: it is a vain attempt to make up the perfection which does not exist in any one of them.

So, too, the authoritative manifestation of God in religion must be one and sole. The idea of a multiplicity of religions, all equally good, is a survival of that tendency to deterioration which expressed itself of old in polytheism. If religion be the divine system for the communication of truth and grace, it does not need to be multiplied, like the cells of an electric battery, in proportion to the increase of the circuit. Religion is a representation of God, and is the exercise of His divine action. A number of them, if they are uniform, are at variance with the supreme unity of God; if they are contradictory, they cannot be the manifestation of Him who is harmony and peace. Thank God for calling you to a Church whose unity proclaims its divine origin and its all-sufficiency.

II. Reason, proceeding on the data which the visible world supplies, sufficiently indicates the Unity of God. Science shows us a surpassing unity underlying all things and carries us back towards one great original principle of life, motion and law. Harmony and strength are marks of all the works of God; and the source of them is unity and not division. Divided power is weakness, divided authority is no authority. In the spiritual and religious sphere, even more than in nature, we should expect to find the impress of God’s Unity. If there is to be among men unity of mind and heart, of doctrine, worship and morals, there must be unity of spiritual laws and religious organization. Disorder and contradiction do not accord with the Divine Ideal. No kingdom divided against itself shall stand. One Church alone maintains the principle of unity and possesses unity in itself. Endeavour always to promote “the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. iv. 3).

III. In relation to man individually, the unity of God demands unity of service from us. We cannot serve two masters; we must serve God alone “with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, with all our mind.” If we render partial service to the world or any creature, to our pride, our interests or our lusts, we are putting a false god in God’s place. It is equivalent to dividing our loyalty among a number of gods, or attempting to worship God simultaneously in discordant religions; it is compounding together light and darkness, truth and falsehood.

Our hearts are too small to love the one great Being sufficiently; much more insufficient is their service if part of it be withdrawn and bestowed on creatures. In any pursuit we can only secure success by concentrating all our thoughts and energies upon it alone. In this respect, the children of light may well take a lesson from the children of this world. Seek God alone and always. Let one principle guide your life in all its diverse operations. Let nothing turn you from the path of consistency, from whole-hearted loyalty and affection towards God. Do not dissipate your energies on any other object; but let all the various duties of life look to God and be turned to His service.

9. The Eternity of God

Today’s Meditation on Christian Dogma is called “The Eternity of God.” It was submitted by Sister Mary Claire and her little sister Kathy from Camp Littlemore Farm, and comes from their very old book, Meditations on Christian Dogma by Father James Bellord, first published in the 19th century. Sister Mary Claire received the book as a gift from an elderly nun friend in County Kilkenny, Ireland, and she treasures it dearly.

The Eternity of God

I. The eternity of God is His infinite tenure of life. His life is nothing else but Himself; it is entirely beyond our understanding and cannot be described in human words, any more than the essence of God could be painted with brushes. As creatures bound to time, we naturally think of existence as unfolding in moments—with beginnings and endings—and so we speak of life in temporal terms. But God’s eternity stands apart from all that. Time and eternity are not just different—they are opposed in every way. While time is the unfolding of life in successive instants, eternity is the simultaneous possession of life in its completeness.

God’s eternity is not made of past, present, or future. As St. Denis tells us, there is no “was” in God, for He never had a past. He never “will be,” for there is no unrealized future before Him. Nor can we say that He simply “is,” for our present is passing and incomplete, but His existence is full and without change.

Because we are unable to grasp eternity as it truly is, we often imagine God’s life as if it were stretched out over an infinite timeline. “He always was,” we say, and “He always will be,” with a present moment in between: “He is.” We picture eternity by stacking countless moments upon each other, as if adding more and more time could eventually amount to eternity. But this is not the way to understand God. In fact, such imagining misleads us, because it tries to use the very element—time—that eternity denies.

So we must mortify our curiosity. Scripture warns us: “Seek not the things that are too high for thee, and search not into things above thy ability: for it is not necessary for thee to see with thy eyes the things that are hid.” We must humbly adore what we cannot explain.

II. Eternity is the possession of a life without any limits. This boundlessness includes the complete absence of beginning and end, which belong only to time and to the creatures that exist in time.

We cannot measure backward through the vast stretches of created existence, nor can we calculate its duration. But we do know that everything we see was once nothing, and every created thing—whether a force, a planet, or a human soul—is gradually using up its strength and will one day fall silent in death. All things in time fade and pass.

Yet beyond all this stands God, the all-pervading and unchanging Existence. “The heavens are the works of Thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou remainest. Thou art always the same, and Thy years shall not fail.” Therefore, as Scripture proclaims: “To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever.”

III. God’s eternity is also said to be complete and perfect because it is entirely free from all the limitations and deficiencies that mark life lived in time. Our life, by contrast, is always unfolding. It is never whole in a single moment, and there is always something just beyond us—something we hope for or something we regret.

While each phase of life brings its own work and joys, each also comes with struggles and losses. We do not possess our life in fullness. We live it in dependence on others and alongside countless other souls. Though we are immortal, and though we may one day pass through an endless series of moments, we still do not live as God lives. His life is absolute; ours is not. Even the life of glory that we will receive in heaven will not be equal to His in independence, completeness, or perfection.

And yet, God in His mercy promises us some measure of participation in that eternal life—so far above our comprehension. We shall be raised one day into the glory and beauty and happiness of His own life, a joy we cannot now imagine or fully understand. Let us give thanks to God for this promise, and desire that happy day with all our hearts.

8. The Immutability of God

 

Today’s Meditation on Christian Dogma is called “The Immutability of God.” It was submitted by Sister Mary Claire and her little sister Kathy from Camp Littlemore Farm, and comes from their very old book, Meditations on Christian Dogmaby Father James Bellord, first published in the 19th century. Sister Mary Claire received the book as a gift from an elderly nun friend in County Kilkenny, Ireland, and she treasures it dearly.

The Immutability of God

I. “With God there is no change or shadow of alteration” (James i. 17). This attribute of unchangeableness is a great perfection in God. We are always impressed by the sight of stability, firmness, permanence of strength and fitness, whether we see them in a grand building, in a political constitution, in a landscape, or in the character of a noble man. All this exists in a supreme degree in God.

Change of any kind is impossible to Him, whether it be in His substance or in His relation to creatures; for change denotes the improving of the position or making it worse, gaining something or losing. As being infinite and possessing in Himself all perfection, it is impossible for God to suffer any addition or any diminution.

As eternal, He exists outside of the conditions of succession and time, so that the progress of events is not a change to Him. The whole of the celestial bodies are in a state of most rapid motion, but this is no change relatively to God, who is everywhere by His immensity.

As all-wise and all-knowing, God cannot experience anything unexpected; nor can He learn any new thing that would change His determinations or His action towards creatures.

How majestic is God, imperturbable, unmoved, unchangeable for all eternity! Prostrate yourself before this grand attribute. Know that God will never change towards you, never desert you, never fail you, never deceive you, nor grow weary of you or forget you. Rest firmly on Him and you will be strengthened in faith, in virtue, in perseverance, by participation to some extent in His immutability.

II. We speak of God changing His dispositions and acting differently at different times towards His creatures. But this is an inaccuracy, necessary in the transference of spiritual ideas into human speech. What change there is is in ourselves, and in the different results produced by the one law in its incidence on our varying actions.

So it is that we speak of the sun as rising, or withdrawing his light, or growing hotter, whereas the changes are really in the conditions of this earth. No alteration then takes place in God as a consequence of our action.

As our sins do not injure Him or disturb Him, so, on the other hand, our service and love are not any new happiness to God, or any increase in His essential glory. So far as we are said to advance His glory, it is only His accidental and temporal glory with regard to creatures that is promoted.

“What doth it profit God if thou be just; or what dost thou give Him if thou be unspotted?” (Job xxii. 3).

Acknowledge humbly that all your justice, which you esteem so highly, is worthless before God; that you have never really done anything for Him, and that you are a most unprofitable servant. He does not want you except for your own good.

III. Consider, on the other hand, how variable and inconstant creatures are. All things are in a state of flux, rising and falling, flourishing and decaying and taking new forms. So the days and seasons and generations pass by. So kingdoms and civilizations and races of men come and go, and the whole surface of the earth is renewed. All ideas, customs, theories, and even sciences, change from day to day.

“They shall perish but Thou shalt continue; and they shall all grow old as a garment, and as a vesture Thou shalt change them, and they shall be changed. But Thou art always the self-same and Thy years shall not fail” (Heb. i. 11, 12).

There is no fixedness, no certainty, no permanence, except in God and in that religion which is never to fail. Human religions change like the minds of men, and all at last suffer the final change of dissolution. The Church of God alone outlives all institutions and never grows antiquated.

Thank God that your faith is founded on an immutable rock; but pray that your life may ever change—for the better.

7. The Immensity of God

 

Today’s Meditation on Christian Dogma is called “The Immensity of God.” It was submitted by Sister Mary Claire and her little sister Kathy from Camp Littlemore Farm, and comes from their very old book, Meditations on Christian Dogmaby Father James Bellord, first published in the 19th century. Sister Mary Claire received the book as a gift from an elderly nun friend in County Kilkenny, Ireland, and she treasures it dearly.

The Immensity of God

I. Immensity is an aspect of God’s Infinity; it is the boundless diffusion of the Divine Essence; and in virtue of this, God is ubiquitous or actually present in all created space. Consequently God does not move from place to place. To do so would be to change, which is contrary to His immutability; and it would be acquiring something, certain relations for instance, not already possessed.

God is not comprised within the dimensions of space, but He is at once in the whole of creation. In those great expanses beyond our solar system which surpass the capacity of arithmetic to describe, and which the swift rays of light take thousands of centuries to traverse, God is present throughout.

He is above all things, not as being locally elevated, but as presiding over all: He is under all things, not as being abased, but as sustaining all: He is within all, not as being enclosed, but as filling them: He is outside all things, not as being excluded, but as enveloping them.

Most literally then “in Him we live and move and be” (Acts xvii. 28). The whole of visible creation up to the remotest nebula is overwhelmed and lost in His immensity, like a microscopic animalcule in the depths of the ocean.

Remember always this all-absorbing presence of the infinite God, and be ever full of respect for Him in all your words and thoughts and actions. What an outrage it is to sin against Him when actually living by His support and in Him!

II. God may be considered as universally present in three different ways.He is present substantially, by His Divine Essence actually being here and everywhere.
He is present everywhere, in that He sees and knows all things; and nothing escapes His watchfulness, even to the most secret thoughts of our souls.
He is present as ruling and guiding all things irresistibly, and operating in them by His power.

Further, God is specially present with His elect.The Apostle says: “Know you not that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (1 Cor. iii. 16).
There is a special watchful providence over the just, and predestination of them to grace and glory.
There is a special supernatural operation of God in the soul, including justifying grace, and the infusion of virtues, and help in all natural and spiritual duties.

How wonderful it is that you should thus possess the kingdom of God within you! This presence of God is your greatest treasure; it gives you strength for every emergency, companionship in loneliness, cheerfulness as against depression, indomitable faith and confidence; it is your happiness and your glory. Value it as such.

III. Although God is absolutely pure, yet He is a witness of every event, yet He contracts no defilement from scenes of sin, He is not hurt by any outrage, He is not dishonoured by any blasphemy on earth or in hell.

It is with Him as with the bright, pure rays of sunlight; they shine upon every kind of foulness, but never become unclean or contaminated. God is present to all our sins, yet “He inhabiteth light inaccessible” (1 Tim. vi. 16) at the same moment. He is with us by His immensity and is far above us by His infinity.

Nothing can pain Him. Nothing can touch His sanctity, His beauty, His perfect felicity. It is only God who can know of evil and not suffer the penalty of knowledge. We cannot pass through it or live amongst it without imminent peril, if not actual corruption.

Keep far away from evil; else, it is tempting God to ask Him to preserve you from it. You must encounter evil, but you need not therefore fall. If God be with you, you can do your duty in the world and still keep yourself unspotted from it. 

“I set the Lord always in my sight: for He is at my right hand, that I be not moved” (Ps. xv. 8).

6. The Infinity of God

 

Today’s Meditation on Christian Dogma is called “The Infinity of God.” It was submitted by Sister Mary Claire and her little sister Kathy from Camp Littlemore Farm, and comes from their very old book, Meditations on Christian Dogma by Father James Bellord, first published in the 19th century. Sister Mary Claire received the book as a gift from an elderly nun friend in County Kilkenny, Ireland, and she treasures it dearly.

The Infinity of God

I. God is infinite in the number of His perfections. It is true that, by virtue of the divine simplicity, the attributes of God are all one and indistinguishable; yet we perceive Him, not as He is, but as our limitations permit. No concept of ours can represent adequately that which is at one and the same time every perfection. We must then view God, now as this perfection, now as that, though all the time we are conscious that all perfections are identified in Him; and that He not only has them all, but further is them all, in the indivisible simplicity of His essence.

God is far more than the sum of all the perfections we can conceive. We can imagine only the perfections which we find in creatures; but God could go on creating for ever more and more perfect beings, without exhausting the revelation of His own perfections. The prophet babbled helplessly, unable to convey a fraction of the mysteries made known to him. “A—a—Lord God! Behold I cannot speak: for I am a child” (Jer. i. 6). St. Paul also saw secret things which cannot be uttered in human speech (2 Cor. xii. 4).

How many things you have seen and enjoyed! Yet they are nothing to the wonders of this earth; and they in their turn are nothing to the wonders of the wider universe; and they again are nothing to the marvels of the angelic world; and the whole sum of all is but the flash of a single ray proceeding from the intense brilliancy of the Divinity. “There are many things hidden from us that are greater than these; for we have seen but a few of His works” (Eccli. xliii. 36).

Adore the Infinity of God.

II. Furthermore, each one of the innumerable perfections of God is infinite in its range and its intensity. Each one is supreme; it cannot be increased by any addition; neither is it subject to the limitations which beset all things within our experience; nor can any perfection fall short or fail.

Thus, strictly speaking, the patience of God can never fail, nor does His mercy come to an end. When we use such expressions, it is to indicate a permanent change which man by his obstinacy and rejection of God works in himself. God cannot be limited by time, for He is eternal; nor by space, for He is immense; He is not limited by the measure of our intelligence—as many would seem to think when they pass judgment on His decrees—for He is incomprehensible; still less is God expressed adequately by the terms we use to describe Him, for He is ineffable. Neither can our hearts fathom the delights of His love.

Thus every perfection of God surpasses all understanding. “We shall say much and yet shall want words; but the sum of our words is, He is all” (Eccli. xliii. 29). How miserable are you before these awful infinities! Humble yourself in silence before this greatness, which your words cannot describe and your mind cannot imagine.

III. God is infinite in magnificence and grandeur. “The Lord is terrible and exceeding great, and His power is admirable” (Eccli. xliii. 31). How can we possibly form any idea to ourselves of this? We can only heap up words indefinite, that convey only the idea that we have no adequate idea of God.

We can only picture to ourselves the trivial scenes of grandeur that we know on earth: the angry sea, a thunder-storm in the tropics, a great battle, the triumphant reception of a conqueror, an Oriental pageant, the ancient glories of Egyptian architecture, the inaccessible heights of a wilderness of snow-clad mountains. These absorb all our faculties and fill us with awe and speechless admiration. They are but little after all, and yet we cannot rise beyond them in our present life.

What adoration and awe are due to God! How wonderful is His presence! We are actually in that presence when we kneel before the silent tabernacle! Let not the lowly surroundings diminish your awe of the Majesty that dwells there.

5. The Goodness of God

 

Today’s Meditation on Christian Dogma is called “The Goodness of God.” It was submitted by Sister Mary Claire and her little sister Kathy from Camp Littlemore Farm, and comes from their very old book, Meditations on Christian Dogma by Father James Bellord, first published in the 19th century. Sister Mary Claire received the book as a gift from an elderly nun friend in County Kilkenny, Ireland, and she treasures it dearly.

The Goodness of God

I. God is good in Himself with natural goodness; that is to say, He possesses all the natural qualities which belong to His nature. God, being truly God, is what God ought to be, and possesses all that God ought to possess; being infinitely perfect, He possesses this entirely and not partially; being necessary, He possesses His perfections absolutely, and cannot suffer any loss or diminution of them.

God possesses every conceivable goodness in an infinite degree. He is all that is most beautiful, holy, pure, delightful, useful, wonderful, lovable. Therefore, when Moses asked to see His face, God answered, “I will show thee all good” (Exodus 33:19).

God has all this not from another, or by participation, but of Himself and by virtue of His own nature. No other being is good in this supereminent way; whence it is written, “None is good but God alone” (Luke 18:19).

How admirable, then, and desirable is God, and deserving of our highest love, even apart from all that He has done for us and the love that He has shown us. Render Him love and service purely for His own sake. This is the highest kind of love and homage. Pray Him, with Moses, to show you His face, and with it supreme and total goodness, not only in the next world, but here too in your meditations.

II. Goodness is, of its nature, “diffusive of itself” (St. Denis). God is good with respect to His creatures, as being the source from which all goodness of every kind is originated and poured forth. He may be compared to the sun, which is ever emitting heat and light and vital force in every direction, on all the worlds which come within its range.

“The eyes of all hope in Thee, O Lord, and Thou givest them meat in due season. Thou openest Thy hand and fillest every creature with blessing” (Psalm 145:15–16).

This diffusion of good is always in full activity, and is never checked for an instant. It falls on all alike, however great their unworthiness or the bad use they make of it. None can escape the continual outpouring of blessings.

All this God does, not under constraint, not moved by any desert on our part, not for any advantage or gain to be expected from us, but simply from the very nature of His goodness itself. Therefore, “give glory to the Lord because He is good. Let the mercies of the Lord give glory to Him, and His wonderful works toward the children of men” (Psalm 106:1, 15).

Glorify God by imitation, and by diffusing upon others, without hope of gain or even of gratitude, such blessings temporal and spiritual as may be within your gift.

III. The immense goodness and kindness of God towards man, the chief of the works of His hands, is manifested in a special way by every one of His attributes; by His power which has created us, wisdom which ordains all for our good, justice which renders to us what is due, mercy which pardons sin, eternity which assures us endless happiness, beauty which ravishes our souls.

God is good to us variously as father, as friend, as brother, as spouse, as master, as benefactor, as our “reward exceeding great.” He is Creator, Preserver, Redeemer, Advocate, Sacrifice, End, Beatitude.

Further, He is our supreme good as being the author of all the good that is in us; He has given us our natural powers, our virtues, our moral perfection, our efficacy for good, all our successes, and all enjoyments.

“The Lord is good to them that hope in Him, to the soul that seeketh Him” (Lamentations 3:25).

Seek God alone, and all these good things will be yours. God gives Himself entirely to you; take care to give yourself entirely to Him. Dedicate your body, your thoughts, your action, your life to Him. Strive to be like God, to be good in every quality, in the practice of every virtue, in your relations to every creature that God has made.

4. The Simplicity of God

 

Today’s Meditation on Christian Dogma is called “The Simplicity of God.” It was submitted by Sister Mary Claire and her little sister Kathy from Camp Littlemore Farm, and comes from their very old book, Meditations on Christian Dogmaby Father James Bellord, first published in the 19th century. Sister Mary Claire received the book as a gift from an elderly nun friend in County Kilkenny, Ireland, and she treasures it dearly.

The Simplicity of God

I. Simplicity means the exclusion of component parts, and is an attribute, although not a property, of spirit. God is supremely spiritual, and is therefore supremely simple. He differs from matter, which has a necessary relation to quantity and therefore to parts. He differs from ourselves, in whom are found not only the composition of quantitative parts, but also the composition of body and soul, of faculties and qualities various in kind. He differs from the angels, in whom is found the composition of essence and existence, of substance and properties.

So we must not consider the character of God as being composed of different qualities antagonistic to and checking one another. We must not think of His mercy as contending with His justice and frustrating it; nor of His promises and threats as representing different frames of mind. We must distinguish between what is figurative, or spoken according to human apprehension, and the inconceivable, inexpressible divine reality.

Your soul, as a spiritual substance, is immensely superior to your material body. Endeavour to become more spiritual, and so more like to God, alienating yourself, as far as you can, from flesh and blood by means of prayer and mortification.

II. From this perfect simplicity of God’s essence which lies at the root of His immutability, it follows that He can receive no extrinsic addition of anything to His substance; nor is He, as we are, brought into new relationships to beings by any change of environment.

So the course of events does not pass through the stages of past, present and future with regard to God. He is always acting, yet in His eternity there is no beginning of action, no end of action, no change of activity. We express the truth in an approximate way when we say that all things and all events are always present at once to God in His eternity, which is a simultaneous totality of life without any succession.

So also God is everywhere, but He is not under the conditions of space; He is great, and yet is not extended or measurable; He creates all things, and is not the richer for them; He changes all things, and yet towards them He changes not.

The simple essence of God is all things; it is law, it is love, it is justice, it is eternity. Hence you cannot divide God so as to possess Him partially. You possess Him entirely or not at all. One mortal sin excludes God entirely from the soul. You cannot disobey one of His laws and have the merit of obeying all the others. He cannot be present with you in one respect and absent in another.

Hence the impossibility of that which so many attempt, viz., serving God simultaneously with mammon, or the world, or self.

III. Not only is God simple in the sense described; He is so in the further sense which excludes duplicity in thought, word or deed. All in Him is simple, straightforward, undisguised truth.

In His teachings and in His dealings with us there is no admixture of Yea and Nay, of “I will” and “I won’t,” but all is categorical and positive, and no word of His can ever pass away. What God promises He will perform; His threats are literally true, and are not spoken for effect.

Hypocrisy, double-dealing, paltering with the truth are abominations in His eyes. He demands from us, in our relations with Him, with ourselves, and with our neighbour, perfect candour, simplicity, consistency.

“Wo to them that are of a double heart, and to wicked lips, and to the hands that do evil, and to the sinner that goeth on the earth two ways. Wo to them that are faint-hearted, who believe not God: . . . and have forsaken the right ways, and gone aside into crooked ways” (Eccli. ii. 14–16).

There are many who would not wilfully deceive a neighbour with false words, yet do not shrink from deceiving themselves with vain excuses for not following the lead of light and grace; but they do not deceive God, and He will not be mocked.