Message from Pr. Cipriano

HOW CAN WE SPEAK ABOUT GOD ?

Man's fakulties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of trhe existence of a personal God, the first cause and final end of all things. The proofs of God's existence can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason.

But, since our knowledge of God is limited, our language about him is equally so. We can name God only by taking creatures as our starting point, and in accordance with our limited human ways of knowing and thinking.

All creatures bear a certain resemblance to God, most especially man, created in the image and likeness of God. The manifold perfections of creatures, their truth-their goodness-their beauty, all reflect the infinite perfection of God. Consequently we can name God by taking his creatures'perfections as our starting point. But God transcends all creatures. We must therefore continually purify our language of everything in it that is limited, imagebound or imperfect, if we are not to confuse our image of God with our human representations. Our human words always fall short of the mistery of God, "the inexpressible, the incomprensible, the invisible, the ungraspable".

Admittedly, in speaking about God like this, our language is using human modes of expression; nevertheless it really does attain to God himself, though unable to express him in his infinite simplicitiy. Likewise, we must recall that concerning God, we cannot grasp what he is, but only what he is not, and how creatures stand in relation to him.

This is why man stands in need of being enlightened by God's revelation, not only about those things that exceed his understanding, but also about those religious and moral truths which of themselves are not beyond the grasp of human reason, so that even in the present condition of the human race, they can be known by all men with ease, with firm certainty nad with no admixture of error.