http://www.catholicworldreport.com/2017/06/09/pope-francis-and-the-first-line-of-the-catechism/ Pope Francis and the first line of the Catechism To flatly state that “God cannot be God without man: this is a great mystery!” is problematic. God has no need for mankind; God had no need to create. Put simply: God lacks nothing. Period. June 9, 2017 Carl E. Olson Pope Francis leads his general audience June 7 in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican. (CNS/Alessandro Bianchi, Reuters) Pope Francis, at yesterday’s General Audience, reportedly (see here and here and here) stated: Dear brothers and sisters, we are never alone. We can be far, hostile; we can even say we are ‘without God.’ But Jesus Christ’s Gospel reveals to us that God cannot be without us: He will never be a God ‘without man’; it is He who cannot be without us, and this is a great mystery! God cannot be God without man: this is a great mystery! As is often the case with the Holy Father, precision and clarity wilt and melt a bit in the service of what may or may not be a good point. The most positive way of understanding his statement, it seems to me, is that since God the Son has joined himself to humanity in a most radical and eternal manner in the Incarnation, God will never be “without man”. There is no going back. That is true, and it’s an important point, of course, because of what it indicates about both the Trinitarian nature of God and the Trinitarian missions (cf. CCC, 257-60). But to flatly state that “God cannot be God without man: this is a great mystery!” is problematic. God has no need for mankind; God had no need to create. Put simply: God lacks nothing. Period. And it’s notable that the very first sentence of the Catechism states: “God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life” (emphasis added). A later section in the Catechism states: “God is eternal blessedness, undying life, unfading light. God is love: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God freely wills to communicate the glory of his blessed life” (par 257). The danger, I think, is that we are tempted to reverse the proper order of how things really are, which is Trinitiarian: all that is, flows from the Trinity and is ordered to the Trinity, which lacks nothing (cf. CCC, 234). When the Catechism states, in the section on prayer, “Whether we realize it or not, prayer is the encounter of God’s thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him”, we must recognize that God’s thirst for us is itself a free gift, not a need. Put in a more dramatic way: even if, after the Incarnation, no one accepted Christ as the Savior, God would still be infinitely perfect and blessed in himself—and yet would still thirst for us, for He “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4). Which is why the opening paragraph of Catechism continues: For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Saviour. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life. Notice how every action described here indicates God’s initiative—He draws close, He calls, He sent, He invites—while man always responds. The same important emphasis can be seen in the opening paragraphs of Lumen Gentium. Notice, too, that God’s gift of divine life—what is called deification or theosis—is a matter of Trinitarian love, not cosmic neediness. To suggest, even unwittingly, that God somehow lacked or was incomplete without us would seriously skew and even damage a proper understanding of both who God is and who we are in relation to Him.
And here is the Holy Father's homily from Wednesday: On God’s Fatherhood, the Source of Our Hope ‘We are never alone. We can be far, hostile; we can even say we are ‘without God.’ But Jesus Christ’s Gospel reveals to us that God cannot be without us’ Dear Brothers and Sisters, good morning! There was something fascinating in Jesus’ prayer, so fascinating that one day His disciples asked to be introduced to it. The episode is found in Luke’s Gospel, who is, among the Evangelists, the one who in the main has documented the mystery of the “praying” Christ: the Lord prayed. Jesus’ disciples were impressed by the fact that He would withdraw in solitude and “immerse” Himself in prayer, especially in the morning and in the evening. Therefore, one day they asked Him to teach them also to pray (Cf. Luke 11:1). And it was then that Jesus transmitted what became the Christian prayer par excellence: the “Our Father.” In truth, Luke, in regard to Matthew, gives us Jesus’ prayer in a somewhat abbreviated form, which begins with the simple invocation: “Father” (v. 2). All the mystery of Christian prayer is summarized here, in this word: to have the courage to call God with the name of Father. The liturgy also affirms it when, inviting us to recite Jesus’ communal prayer, used the expression “we dare to say.” In fact, to call God with the name of “Father” is not in any way a fact taken for granted. We would have been led to use the highest titles, which seem to us more respectful of his transcendence. Instead, to invoke Him as “Father” puts us in a relationship of confidence with Him, as a child who turns to his father, knowing that he is loved and cared for by him. This is the great revolution that Christianity imprints in man’s religious psychology. The mystery of God, which always fascinates us and makes us feel small, does not, however, make us more afraid, it does not crush us; it does not make us anxious. This is a difficult revolution to receive in our human mind, so true is this that even in the accounts of the Resurrection it is said that the women, after seeing the empty tomb and the Angel, “they went out and fled [. . .] for trembling and astonishment had come upon them” (Mark 16:8). However, Jesus reveals to us that God is a good Father, and he says to us: “Do not be afraid!” We think of the parable of the merciful father (Cf. Luke 11-32). Jesus talks of a father who has only love for his children. A father who does not punish his son for his arrogance and who is even capable of entrusting to him his part of the inheritance and of letting him leave the home. God is Father, says Jesus, but not in the human way, because there is no father in this world who would behave as the protagonist of this parable. God is Father in His way: good, vulnerable before man’s free will, capable only of conjugating the verb “To love.” When the rebellious son, after having squandered everything, finally returns to his childhood home, that father does not apply criteria of human justice, but feels first of all the need to forgive, and with his embrace he makes his son understand that in all that long time of absence he failed, he painfully failed his father’s love. What an unfathomable mystery is a God who has this type of love in his dealings with his children! Perhaps it is for this reason that, evoking the center of the Christian mystery, the Apostle Paul did not feel like translating into Greek a word that Jesus pronounced in Aramaic: ”abba.” Twice in his Letters (Cf. Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6) Saint Paul touches upon this subject, and twice he leaves that word un-translated, in the same way in which it flowered on Jesus’ lips, “abba.” An even more intimate term than “father,” and that some translate “daddy, babbo [Italian way of saying ‘daddy’].” Dear brothers and sisters, we are never alone. We can be far, hostile; we can even say we are “without God.” But Jesus Christ’s Gospel reveals to us that God cannot be without us: He will never be a God “without man”; it is He who cannot be without us, and this is a great mystery! God cannot be God without man: this is a great mystery! And this certainty is the source of our hope, which we find kept in all the invocations of the Our Father, When we are in need of help, Jesus does not tell us to be resigned and to shut ourselves in ourselves, but to turn to the Father and to ask Him with trust. All our needs, the most evident and daily as food, health, work to that of being forgiven and sustained in temptations, are not the mirror of our solitude: instead, there is a Father who always looks at us with love, and who certainly does not abandon us. Now I propose something to you: every one of us has so many problems, so many needs. Let us think, a bit, in silence, of these problems and these needs. We also think of the Father, of our Father, who cannot be without us, and who is looking at us at this moment. And all together, with trust and hope, we pray: “Our Father, Who art in Heaven . . .” Thank you! https://zenit.org/articles/general-audience-on-gods-fatherhood-the-source-of-our-hope/
I really enjoyed the Homily on Wednesday, it is not always that I understand Pope Francis but I pray and ask for help in this regularly. I think that some of these teachings can be a bitter pill to me at times in part because of my rebellious nature.
I don't see what the point was - like reposting the entire thing proves what he said is sound? "But Jesus Christ’s Gospel reveals to us that God cannot be without us: He will never be a God “without man”; it is He who cannot be without us, and this is a great mystery! God cannot be God without man: this is a great mystery! " It's a mercy from God that he wasn't hit with lightening in making that statement. That has Masonic language written all over it - God can't be God without man?? God didn't magically turn into God when he created the heavens and the earth, the animals and plants, Adam and Eve. "In the beginning was the Word: and the Word was with God: and the Word was God." John 1:1 To claim that God NEEDS us - that He CANNOT be without us is blasphemy. He CHOOSES to be with us, but He does NOT NEED us to be God. And yes, that is what Francis said. No spin, call a spade a spade
Yes, it's a very strange statement especially from a Pope. To give the Pope the benefit of the doubt, I suppose it could be a peculiar way of telling us that God wants us to know, love and trust Him like we would a father who always puts his children's needs before his own. Nevertheless, God can do very well without any or all of us. If God really needed man He has a Son who is both human and divine. It's discomfiting to hear the Pope effectively place limits on God's omnipotence. As an aside, I'm amused to see Pope Francis quote from the liturgy "we dare to say". I was at Mass in a Franciscan Church when those words were introduced to the liturgy. The celebrant who is a huge fan of Pope Francis devoted his homily to railing against the inclusion of those four words. I stopped going to Mass in that Church because of that priest.
The point was to at least make it easy to read what the Pope said rather than what a relentless critic of the Pope thought about what he said! The Pope's critics will never understand Pope Francis but I'm sure there are a lot of people who read this forum (guests) who are able to make their own discernments.
Bishop Barron has an excellent homily about God's absolute sufficiency unto Himself. He has no need of anything or anyone. But in His eternal charity and generosity He wishes to share His joy and His love. Thus He creates us. It is colossal ego to even imagine for a second that God "needs" us. As Jesus said to Catharine of Siena: " I am He Who is. You are she who is not. "
Precisely! Thus the Holy Father tells us: "Jesus Christ’s Gospel reveals to us that God cannot be without us: He will never be a God “without man”; it is He who cannot be without us, and this is a great mystery! God cannot be God without man: this is a great mystery!"
HERESY. PERIOD. He's a pope he should choose his words better if he wants to speak about God CHOOSING to love us
We think of the parable of the merciful father (Cf. Luke 11-32). Jesus talks of a father who has only love for his children. A father who does not punish his son for his arrogance and who is even capable of entrusting to him his part of the inheritance and of letting him leave the home. God is Father, says Jesus, but not in the human way, because there is no father in this world who would behave as the protagonist of this parable. God is Father in His way: good, vulnerable before man’s free will, capable only of conjugating the verb “To love.” When the rebellious son, after having squandered everything, finally returns to his childhood home, that father does not apply criteria of human justice, but feels first of all the need to forgive, and with his embrace he makes his son understand that in all that long time of absence he failed, he painfully failed his father’s love. I believe that to best understand Pope Francis' statement: "Jesus Christ’s Gospel reveals to us that God cannot be without us: He will never be a God “without man,” it is best to understand it in the context of the above paragraph on the radical nature of the Father's love reaching out to the wayward. I really don't believe he was attempting to address the issue of God's absolute sufficiency. Is his choice of words confusing, imprecise, and sloppy? Yes, but... Safe in the Hearts of Jesus and Mary!
God is inextricably linked to man through the incarnation of the second person of the Holy Trinity. That is why some angels rebelled and became demons. The idea of God becoming man was repellent to satan and other angels.
It's simply ridiculous, David, to say that God will never be a God without man. God was God before He created man and would still be God if every human exercised free will to choose Hell. It begs further questions such as: How many men does God need to be a God? Is there a quota? Are we all saved in the end or is Hell abolished because God is so good that He can't bear the though of people suffering forever and He loves us so much that He can't carry on without us? The pat answer to those questions "it's a mystery" might suffice for you and others who twist yourselves inside out explaining away heresy but they will come back to haunt future popes who aren't the darling of atheists, fallen away Catholics and the secular press. If Pope Francis truly is a faithful son of the Church as he claims, it's time he copped on to the fact that we had a Church and popes before him and, short of the Second Coming, we will have popes after him. Somebody needs to remind him that prudence is one of the four cardinal virtues and he could do with exercising some of it in his speech.
So true. Jesus Christ is God and is both fully human and fully divine. I believe our Holy Father had this in mind. And while God is fully omnipotent, there is one thing He cannot do (other than sinning): He cannot create Love. God is Love. He cannot create Himself because He has always existed. Love can only be freely given by a created being. As the famed exorcist Father Fortea put it: Offering a being the possibility of faith also supposes the risk that in this same being evil may flourish instead of faith. God, by giving free will to the angels and human beings, knew that freedom, once bestowed, could be used for good or evil. Of course, God could have created the cosmos in any way he liked, without any restrictions or limits. But a saint is not created; one becomes a saint through the action of grace. The gift of freedom allows for a Hitler as well as a [Saint] Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa). Once the gift of freedom has been given, consequences–good or evil–flow from every act of the will. In the material cosmos there is no spiritual good; the good of the cosmos is purely physical. Spiritual (or moral) good is qualitatively superior but necessarily requires a free choice. Thus, the appearance of moral evil in no way upset God’s plan. The possibility of evil was already part of the divine plan before the creation of thinking beings. Finally, the most important and powerful reason for God’s granting angels the gift of freedom was for them to love. God loves His creation, and He desires to be loved in return. But love requires receptivity–it must be received freely (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1828). The same God who can create the cosmos with only an act of His will cannot create that love that is born and proven in the suffering of the faith. The love of God is not created; it must be freely given by a created being. http://www.spiritualdirection.com/2012/11/13/why-did-god-put-the-demons-to-the-test
There is not a lot I can say to those who cannot see the beauty of what Pope Francis is teaching us in this particular homily. But I found a good response on another forum: What a sad state for someone to be told God does not need them. How sad it is for any child to be told their father does not need them.
Please. Cry me a river. An adult spirituality that one liberal Cardinal claims we should be expected to graduate to would realize that we are but dust, and that God in His Infinite Love and Mercy has created us from nothing, that without Him we are nothing, but that God does not NEED us to be God, nor does He need us to be complete. This is juvenile thought and complete heresy. One can preach on the Infinite Love that God has for us. A good homily on what a crucifixion entails would be more relatable in helping people to "get" how immense is the Love of God for us. Our egos are inflated enough - why spread that heresy that God NEEDS us in order to be God? We are nothing. It is Satan who wishes to make us think we are something.
Sad but true, as is the truth that the same omnipotent but loving God will permit us to suffer eternally if that be our choice. At least that's what Jesus told us and the Church has always held to be true but these days there's no guarantee that's what the Church will hold to be true going forward. Sometimes the truth hurts but that doesn't make it any less true.
"When this period was over, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes to heaven; my reason was restored to me, and I blessed the Most High, I praised and glorified the One who lives forever, Whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and whose kingdom endures through all generations. All who live on the earth are counted as nothing; he does as he wills with the powers of heaven and with those who live on the earth. There is no one who can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?” Daniel 4:31-32 "The God who made the world and all that is in it, the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in sanctuaries made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands BECAUSE he needs anything. Rather it is he who gives to everyone life and breath and everything. He made from one the whole human race to dwell on the entire surface of the earth, and he fixed the ordered seasons and the boundaries of their regions, so that people might seek God, even perhaps grope for him and find him, though indeed he is not far from any one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being,’ as even some of your poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’ Since therefore we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the divinity is like an image fashioned from gold, silver, or stone by human art and imagination. God has overlooked the times of ignorance, but now he demands that all people everywhere repent because he has established a day on which he will ‘judge the world with justice’ through a man he has appointed, and he has provided confirmation for all by raising him from the dead.” Acts 17:24-31 "When I see your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars that you set in place— What is man that you are mindful of him, and a son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him little less than a god, crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him rule over the works of your hands, put all things at his feet: All sheep and oxen, even the beasts of the field, The birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and whatever swims the paths of the seas. O LORD, our Lord, how awesome is your name through all the earth!" Psalm 8:4-10 "Blessed be the LORD, my rock, who trains my hands for battle, my fingers for war; My safeguard and my fortress, my stronghold, my deliverer, My shield, in whom I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me. LORD, what is man that you take notice of him; the son of man, that you think of him? Man is but a breath, his days are like a passing shadow." Psalm 144:1-4 You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts will remain restless until they rest in You. Saint Augustine Lord, take me from myself and give me to Yourself. Saint Catherine of Siena Christian joke Question: “What’s the difference between you and God?” Answer: “God never thinks He’s you.” To worship a crocodile is better than to worship yourself. Peter Kreeft What gnats are compared with humans, so is the whole creation compared with God. Saint John Chrysostom Let nothing disturb you. Let nothing frighten you. All things are passing away; God never changes. Patience obtains all things. Whoever has God lacks nothing; God alone suffices. Saint Teresa of Ávila Catechism of the Catholic Church: PROLOGUE "FATHER, . . . this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent."1 "God our Savior desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth."2 "There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved"3 - than the name of JESUS. I. THE LIFE OF MAN - TO KNOW AND LOVE GOD 1 God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Savior. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life."
Well of course I agree with everything in this post as would Pope Francis. Allow me to add a little quote from my favourite messages of True Life in God: Can the dust praise Me? can it proclaim praises to Me? no, not unless My Spirit lives inside this dust; without Me you are nothing; the light in your eyes comes from My Light; I will teach you to obey Me for I will level you to the ground; how else will I be seen? I mean to progress you into holiness; I will crown all My plans with success, so do not deny Me from meeting you; do your work as far as you can, but take care not to neglect the better part; February 2, 1993
Another sad truth, David, is that you don't know that Pope Francis would agree with everything in DivineMercy's post. You're guessing that he didn't mean what he actually said: "We can be far, hostile; we can even say we are “without God.” But Jesus Christ’s Gospel reveals to us that God cannot be without us: He will never be a God “without man”; it is He who cannot be without us, and this is a great mystery! God cannot be God without man: this is a great mystery! Where, specifically in any of the four Gospels, is it revealed to us that God cannot be without us?
