Why can't we see God?

All the sleuthing skill in the world won't solve the mystery of God. But wouldn't an occasional glimpse of the divine bolster our faith, or are those who think so marching to the beat of a different conundrum?

Saint Augustine was walking along a beachoneday, an old story tells us, contemplating the mystery of God. He came upon a young boy who was pouring buckets of water from the ocean into a hole he'd dug in the sand.

"What are you doing?" Augustine asked.

"I'm pouring the ocean into this hole," was the reply.

"You can never do that!" scoffed Augustine.

"No, and neither can you ever comprehend the mystery of God." And with that the boy, who was really an angel, disappeared.

Even today, unraveling the mystery of God remains as daunting a task as pouring the ocean into a tiny hole. According to Richard McBrien's new Encyclopedia of Catholicism (HarperCollins, 1995), mystery "refers to the ultimate incomprehensibility of God," the fact that "God is not just unknown, but unknowable, literally incomprehensible." God is mystery because, now and always, God is unfathomable. We can learn a great deal about God, but we cannot finally know God.

Our first encounter with the mystery of God comes from trying to grasp or believe in someone we cannot experience with our senses. As McBrien notes in Catholicism(Winston Press, 1980), God, who is "totally other than we are ... totally of the spiritual order ... is not visible to our bodily senses," must always be grasped through our other experiences of people and the world around us.

A friend of mine, Ed, is struggling with the question of God's existence and finding it difficult to accept on faith someone he cannot see or touch or hear.

"If God wants me to believe in him, why doesn't he do something like pick up a chair and throw it across the room?" Ed asks. "Why won't he show himself? Why does he have to be so mysterious?

"I would like to believe in God," he continues, "but the whole idea of God seems to just be an excuse or explanation for all the things we can't understand, like how the universe started. For me to believe in God, he'd have to show himself."

Whats the big secret?

Why won't God just tear back the veil, and throw chairs for proof, if that's what people need to believe? And why can't we who do believe in God, see God? Dave Wilkins, a married marketing executive and father from Bartlett, Illinois, once asked those same questions.

"I used to want God to show himself to me," he says. "But then I realized, suppose I did see a burning bush. What would it really mean? Would it mean, okay, God exists? Would it change me? I don't think it would if I didn't already have God inside me.

"I think the more time you spend looking for God in external things, the more frustrated you're going to become. People that spend their time and their thoughts and all their energy saying, `God, where are you, where are you?,' are wasting a lot of what God is," Wilkins says. "I realize now that God is all around us, in simple things like children, or in a person helping someone get back on their feet again. Those are the ways I think you can really see God."

Natalie Carlton, a wife and mother of two living in Lynn, West Virginia, also finds God in the world around her. "I never worry that the fact that I can't see God could mean there is no God. I experience God in everyday life. Having my children, for example, just being able to conceive and to give birth, how could I have any questions about the existence of God after experiencing that miracle?"

Both Wilkins and Carlton are expressing a very Catholic response to God's mystery, believing as they do that God's presence, while not immediately visible or available, is mediated and made real to them in a wide variety of human experiences. As McBrien notes, our contact with God is sacramental, for the hidden God imbues our visible world, and "in grasping that visible reality we can grasp the hidden God."

That doesn't mean our faith removes the mystery, or all our questions. Like many others, Carlton trusts the God who is present in her life even when she does not comprehend every part of her faith. "I don't always understand everything I believe," she says. "The Trinity, for example, is difficult for me to comprehend, but that doesn't bother me because I think some things aren't supposed to be understood right now. Maybe when we get to heaven we'll find out all the answers. But I trust that God is good and they will be good answers."

For many of us, our second encounter with the mystery of God comes when we realize how frail and puny our images of God are, and how all of our language about God must finally fail to do anything more than point in the direction of this unfathomable mystery.

Even Thomas Aquinas admitted that in the end our "utmost knowledge of God is to know that we do not know him." Often we encounter this mystery when some of our childhood images of God begin to show their limits.

As Sister Elizabeth Johnson, C.S.J., professor of theology at Fordham University in New York City and award-winning author of She Who Is (Crossroad, 1993), notes, "If we picture God as this elderly gentleman in the sky with a white beard, or as a bigger and better masculine image, then for many people who are struggling with belief in God, that is hard to believe in." The image no longer fits with or explains their complex and adult experiences of God.

"But we have to realize that those images are metaphors. They're just pointers. They're not literally who God is. God is actually an infinite mystery, an ocean of love and compassion for the world, and therefore can be addressed in different ways, as in fact the Bible does when it uses maternal images of God."

When people let go of their limited ideas of God, Johnson says, they can then "begin to realize that they're not being asked to believe in some overcontrolling parent figure. Too often I find that people who have a crisis of faith and don't believe in God, what they actually don't believe in anymore is a lesser God. It's not really God."

To love God is to know God

How then are we to know about an invisible God who outruns all our metaphors? How are we to engage the mystery of God? As Christians, we believe that Jesus Christ answered that question. Through Jesus, Paul tells us, believers can "come to the full wealth of conviction which understanding brings, and grasp God's secret. That secret is Christ himself; in him lie hidden all God's treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Col. 2:2). As Dominican theologian Edward Schillebeeckx has noted, jesus is the sacrament of God, the Word God speaks to us and the lace we

Because of Jesus the opportunity to know God to our fullest potential is offered freely to everyone. As Saint Thomas Aquinas explained in his Sermon on the Creed, "No philosopher before the coming of Christ could, with all his striving, know as much about God and the things required for eternal life as an old woman could through faith after Christ's coming."

"The drama of the Incarnation is that God, who is beyond all limits and is ungraspable, freely chooses to make himself in a certain sense graspable. God somehow became knowable," explains William Thompson, professor of theology at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. "We believe that God is able to be related to and experienced and loved, that God is comprehensible and personal."

Does this mean that the mystery of God is solved because through Jesus we can fully understand God? No, because mystery, by its very definition, means something that is beyond understanding. "Jesus reveals God to us insofar as a human being can be the vessel through which we are opened out onto the infinite," Thompson says, "but that doesn't mean the visible fully exhausts the invisible. It's more like a window opening out onto the invisible.

"Ask yourself this question: How can you enclose something that is unlimited into a limited space? It just can't be done. It is a solemnly defined teaching of the Catholic Church that no matter how similar God is to us through the things by which he reveals himself to us, including the humanity of Christ, God's dissimilarity to the human creature is always greater than his similarity."

Johnson agrees. "Our mind is such that we can understand tremendously much about God, but never fully," she says, "because if ever we got to the limit of the fullness of God, then God would not be infinite."

All this mystery surrounding God can be very frustrating, says Thompson. "In a certain sense, we resent the mystery of God. We have this idea that we're supposed to have control of things, get them in our grasp. The mystery of God makes us uncomfortable because we're not in charge. There's always something beyond that we can't quite reach."

Still, the mystery of God is not meant to humiliate us but to awaken our sense of awe, wonder, and love. It is often in the very recognition of our limits that we are able to come to know the unbelievable graciousness of God. Freed from the impossible task of trying to "crack the divine puzzle," we can fully experience our own authentic humanity and the miraculous power of God in our lives. We can even discover that the mystery of God, far from being a forbidden zone into which we dare not enter, points to an unfathomable and unquenchable source of grace and love.

Patty Burnett, an executive secretary and mother of two living in Redmond, Washington, has struggled long and hard with the mystery of God. "I'm glad God is so patient," Burnett says. "I seem to learn ma e one little lesson a day, or one little seed is planted a week. I still feel I have so much to learn about God. I probably feel like I'm in junior high as far as my Christian life goes."

But those seeds and lessons have helped to gradually change Burnett's basic understanding of God. "I used to see God as old and "musty," she recalls. "I didn't know God was so beautiful, that there was so much to know about him. I just pushed him away and didn't really want to know him. Basically my faith was dusty, dry bones. I had no joy; I was just going through the motions."

But after turning to God for help during a painful divorce, Burnett came to know God in a real and personal way. "After my divorce," she says, "I was totally rejected and totally unloved. I'd lost my dream - all those ideals of the perfect family and home that you see in magazines and on TV. So I started searching, and I found a scripture passage, Jeremiah 29:13, that says: `When you look for me, you will find me. Yes, when you seek me with all your heart, you will find me with you, says the Lord.'

"I love that scripture," says Burnett, "but I didn't always do what it recommends. I used to give God only what I wanted to give him. But now, putting the Lord first, I wake up and am excited to see what he's got out there for me. Oh, I had moments in the past of feeling close to God, but nothing like now, being so totally dependent on God that I've fallen passionately and deeply in love with God."

We've got Spirit

Coming to engage the mystery of God, to know God in such an intimate way, is possible because Christ, the very sacrament of the mystery of God, has sent his Spirit among us. In the gift of the Holy Spirit, Thompson explains, "God has not simply revealed himself to us in history through Jesus, but somehow God's gift and revelation of himself through Jesus is made something that is able to get into us, and we are able to participate in the very person of God."

In 1 Corinthians we read, "Among human beings, who knows what pertains to a person except the spirit of the person that is within? Similarly, no one knows what pertains to God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the things freely given us by God.... For `who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to counsel him?' But we have the mind of Christ" (1 Cor. 2:11-16).

What does it mean for us to possess the mind of Christ? It means to discover "things beyond our seeing, things beyond our hearing, things beyond our imagining, all prepared by God for those who love him, these it is that God has revealed t us through the Spirit. For the Spirit explore everything, even the depths of God's own nature" (1 Cor. 2:9,10).

Just how the Holy Spirit will teach u about God differs with each individual. "The most significant single word that can be said about the Holy Spirit is surprise," write Bishop Joseph McKinney in his book, Living in the Power of Pentecost. "There is no way that we can predict how, where, when, and why the Holy Spirit will move. But when we have the sensitivity to the role of the Holy Spirit we often experience the wonderful surprise that bring newness of life."

McKinney suggests asking the Holy Spirit the following questions every day: "Are you trying to say anything to me today? Is there something you want me to know or some thing you want me to do?" And then listen. "Stillness, openness, expectation. Those are very important ingredients in a health prayer life.... When we learn to listen in prayer, we know with our knower' that God is present and acting. I don't know of an way to develop this sense except by developing a habit of regular quiet prayer."

It is up to us, then, to listen to the Holy Spirit speaking in our souls, and, as Burnett's favorite scripture says, to keep seeking God with all our heart.

All that loving and listening and seeking on our part will be more than matched by God. jesus reassures us, "Whoever loves me will be loved by the Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him. If anyone loves me, he keeps my word, and my Father loves him, and we will come to him, and live in him" John 14:21,23).

We are also opened up to the rich mystery of God in the sacrament of the "church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of truth" (1 Tim. 3:15). This "people of God" entrusted with the Holy Spirit mediates God's mystery to us in a variety of gifts and signs. And one of the great gifts of the church that is designed to acquaint us with God's mystery, according to Thompson, is today's liturgy.

"The word liturgy means `the work of the people,' and it is work to expose ourselves to the mystery of God. Liturgy is always back and forth, moments of silence, then reading, then articulating the mystery. It's always between the unsaid and the said, the unsayable and the sayable, the dynamic of Christian revelation: Jesus is divine and human," Thompson explains.

"Liturgy is the church's attempt to initiate us into the drama of this mystery, and to initiate us into it in such a way that the mystery doesn't overwhelm us or crush us. We are initiated into the mystery with the protection afforded us in our liturgy by the ongoing story of God's revealing of himself in divine history."

Demystifying the mystery

The mystery of God as presented by the Catholic Church's liturgy has intrigued Molli Vassar nearly all her life. Vassar is an associate pastoral minister living in Uniontown, Pennsylvania with her husband and children. "I can remember always being attracted to the Catholic Church," she says. "Even though I've only been Catholic for five years, my association goes back 30 years to when I was taken to a Catholic church for music lessons.

"The nun who was teaching me would have me wait in the back of the church while she went to noon prayers, and I would look around and see all these people with wings and halos, and I thought that must be what it looks like in heaven. And I remember thinking, this is it! I knew at 8 years old that there was some mystery contained in the Catholic Church that was not accessible anywhere else."

As a child, Vassar attended a Protestant church where, she recalls, "We had a balcony way up high in the church, and I would go up there all by myself and that's where I would sit for church. It was almost as if I thought that if I could get up high enough, I could get up where God was, up to the mystery. I was always looking for that mystery.

"And now that I'm Catholic, I have discovered that mystery in so many ways in the church - through my prayers, and especially through the accessibility of a tangible God that no other church possesses. Only in the Catholic Church do we have this God that we can touch and we can taste and we can see, and he is sitting there in his real, true presence."

Along with the Eucharist, the other sacraments of the church are very meaningful to Vassar. "Those visible signs and symbols of God's presence among us add to the depth of the mystery, as do sacramentals. To me those are such powerful and wonderful things that, as a convert to Catholicism, I treasure."

As for comprehending the mystery of God, Vassar says, "I don't want to know God in a scholarly way. I much prefer to know him through my heart. Understanding God has to come from grace.

"I think it's like us trying to explain quantum physics to a baby. No matter how gracious and patient we would be, the baby is incapable of understanding. It's the same with our knowledge of God. Infused knowledge is certainly something that we know is given by God."

It's God's Divine right 

Still, both our hearts and minds are made to seek after the Lord, and God continues to grace the Catholic Church and her members with deeper comprehension of the divine mystery.

"The whole development of doctrine shows that, as the years go on, the church, under the power of the Holy Spirit, is growing in understanding and appreciation of what Jesus was all about," Johnson says.

But no matter how much we learn of God, the fact remains that we will never truly grasp all of who God is. To do so would destroy our humanity. We would have to be God to know as God knows, and that, says Thompson, "would be idolatry, because it would try to de-divinise God. God will always remain the transcendent mystery, and that's part of the beauty and glory of God."

So even in eternity our understanding of God's mystery will never be exhausted. "All through eternity we will continue discovering more about God," Johnson says. "What we will have in heaven is the enjoyment of the nearness of God's presence. It will be absolute joy in the presence of the lover. And the mystery of continuously exploring who God is, the mystery of ourselves, and the wonder of it all will never end."

Happily, that never-ending mystery is a perfect complement to our inquisitive minds. "We have curious minds precisely because God is infinite," Johnson explains. "We can keep going deeper and deeper into the mystery. We will never wear the mystery out."

So boredom won't be a problem in heaven, or here on earth in our relationship with God. Instead, as we draw closer and closer to our beloved, the mystery of the God who is love will only fire our hearts and engage our imaginations more and more. For love is the only thing that will endlessly satisfy our desire for newness and excitement, and love is found perfectly in God. God will always be new, always have more for us to discover.

But if, along the way, we do sometimes find ourselves frustrated in our attempts to understand God, we can be comforted by the words of Saint Augustine, who said, "Lest you become discouraged, know that when you love, you know more about who God is than you ever could know with your intellect."