know God

The Catholic Faith Video Series: Your Tough Questions Answered [Video #10]

Question: Why doesn’t god ever show himself?  How can you have faith in someone you have not seen or met?  How do people put blind faith/trust in people that they don’t know well? 
Please watch video below for answer:
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If you prefer to read, below is Deacon Robin’s Answer:

This is a great question and I think many people may have this question. We can probably put it under umbrella of, “Where is God? And why can’t we see him?”

 I think we could also make the case that if God wanted people to believe in Him, why wouldn’t He just show Himself in a powerful and obvious way? I’m sure that at times we want God to overwhelm us and overcome our doubts and just prove that he exists. We want God to not be so ambiguous. I think we can tell ourselves that if God revealed himself then people would find it much easier to believe in him and have faith in him!

 But here’s thing, God could do that but he has chosen not to. God is so infinite and marvelous and full of splendor and love but imagine what would happen if he just revealed himself to you and me? Imagine the most powerful being in the world appeared to you? What would you do? I feel like you would have no choice but to believe in Him. Think about it, could you really refuse the most infinite, powerful, glorious and loving being ever known?

 I think most of us would not be able to refuse God if he revealed himself in this way. And that’s one of the reasons why God chooses to remain hidden. It so that we can choose to believe in him or not. Really, it’s so that can have the freedom to believe in God or to choose not to believe in God. God loves us so much and respects our free-will so much that he will never impose himself on us.

 God insists on our free will so much so that he gives us the ability to live as though he did not exist. He gave humanity the power to crucify him, to spit on his face and to nail him to the cross because of his respect for humanity’s free will. His power could force our obedience but what he wants more than anything is our love.

And so we can put our faith in God and our trust in him. But it is important to know who you are putting your faith and trust in and a great way to do this is by these two ways: 1) read the scriptures. If you want to know who God is, then read about him in the gospels and how he shows his love. Pray with the scriptures and you will get to know God more closely and when you know him better, you will come to trust him and love Him more and more. And the 2nd way is to receive Jesus in the Eucharist. If you want to know God more closely what better way is there than to receive Jesus who is hidden in Holy Communion.

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