by Jessica Marçal
In this year of the Faith instituted by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, the great proposal is to rediscover faith in God, knowing how to give reasons for believing in the faith that you profess. But who is God? How can a human being have certainty of His existence?

For someone who does not have mature faith, at times it becomes complicated to understand the existence of God, since,  materially speaking, one cannot see Him and cannot touch Him. But beyond these questions, the priest and theologian Paulo Ricardo de Azevedo Júnior of the archdiocese of Cuiabá emphasized that the most important thing is to understand what it means to have a God, much more than to logically comprehend His existence.

“The most important thing is not whether we know logically if God exists or not. The most important thing is that we know what it means to have a God, or, if God exists, then I am for Him, He is my Lord and I do not exist for me.”

This is one of the motives, according to the priest, for which God is a reality that the human being has difficulty accepting. He believes that the doubt around the existence of God in truth is not because God is unattainable through philosophical reflection, but because His existence proves that the human being is not the lord of his own life.

“Then the meaning of God for me: means that I am not God and that I should live for Him. Here is the great message, the message of that Christianity always wants in the first place is that of the human leaving idolatry, leaving the position of putting himself in God’s place.”

God in the Imagination of Each One

The comprehension that each one has of God is something quite particular, as the adopted imaged references to refer to him. Some associate God as a person who is in the Heavens, others as a spirit, a voice in the universe. Fr. Paul explains that in truth, God through his own concept, cannot be equated to any human experience. He compares the impossibility of the human mind to capture God to a cup containing the whole ocean.

“A true God, exactly for being difficult to be understood, is the proof that He is truly God. The road of human strength to arrive to God is always difficult.”
Ele enfatiza que o caminho a ser percorrido, então,  para chegar a essa compreensão sobre quem é Deus é exatamente o contrário: Deus é que vem até o homem. “No cristianismo, nós sabemos que Deus veio até nós. Jesus não é uma confecção da mente humana, mas nós vemos que é Deus que se rebaixa para se tornar compreensível e fazer com que o homem seja capaz de fazer uma experiência verdadeira de Deus”.

He emphasizes that the way to go, then to arrive to this comprehension on whom God is, is exactly the opposite: God it is who comes to man. In Christianity, we know that God comes to us. Jesus is not a confection of the human mind, but we see that He is God who comes down to become comprehensible and to make it that the man is capable of making a a true experience of God.”

Revelation and Intelligence

In this way, then how does the human being, welcome the revelation of God, recognizing Him as creator of all things? According to Fr. Paulo, human intelligence itself bring the deduction that the order of the universe can only be the fruit of intelligence because randomness only generates disorder. And this is a philosophical deduction that all human beings in good will can reach. But he stresses a curiosity that also is important of being cleared that is the fact that God in his omnipotence does not present Himself face to face in a way that man would not have any more doubt of His existence.

“The answer is simple: if God were to present himself to man, the power of attraction and of conviction of the truth that is God would take our freedom and man would not be free anymore to say to God and to love Him or to reject God and turn aside from Him. God wants to preserve our freedom, because what God wants from us is love and love only exists when man is free.”

And how much of the mystery of the Holy Trinity, on some doubt that one may have on the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the priest stressed that this was a revelation that that man knew through Jesus Christ.

“This hidden reality in the eternal mystery of God only can be known in Jesus Christ. It is not possible to have access to the trinity through a natural-scientific nor philosophical. Simply it is a truth that must be known through Revelation and not through human reasoning.”

translated from Portuguese