Spiritual Journey
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

I - God

According to the example of St. Thomas and following him, our reflections will be based on the Faith, on Revelation, and eventually on arguments of reason: "Justus ex fide vivit - the just, the holy, lives by the faith", because faith carries in it like a germ, the Beatific Vision; and this is the end for which we were created. Faith elevates the light of our understanding and confers on it an incomparable wisdom.

The first subject of study presented in the Summa Theologica is God. That is also the first subject of the prayer of Our Lord: "Our Father Who art in Heaven." It is the first affirmation of our Credo: "I believe in God..." It is the First Commandment: "You shall worship one God."

For it is God Who is the first good of man, and also the last, his origin and his end. His happiness everyday, as well as for eternity, is God. From the first hours of conscience, the soul of a baby must turn toward God and open itself to the great sun of God, "quae illuminat omnem hominem venientem in hunc mundum - who enlightened every man who cometh into this world" (Jn 1:9).

Blessed are the angels who have written in their hearts "quis ut Deus - who is like God?" and who have not stumbled in the test.

Blessed is the Virgin Mary, immaculate in her conception, who ever turned her soul towards God, from her tenderest childhood.

Blessed is the soul of Our Lord, illuminated by the Beatific Vision from the instant of His creation.

Why these excuses, why these delays, why this blindness in the knowledge and love of God, even by many who are baptized?

This obvious fact is what inspired the lamentations of Our Lord, in the Psalms, in the Reproaches of Good Friday, in the first chapter of St. John. One might think that what caused His agony in the Garden of Olives was the sight of atheism in action. The Love is not loved: "non requirunt Deum... non receperunt - They have not sought God, they have not received Him".

Does this drama leave us indifferent? We are overcome by this reality of the ignorance of God. What can we do about it? All of modern society encourages this ignorance. But isn't there in ourselves too much ignorance of God? Let us make an effort to meditate on God, to approach this unfathomable mystery of "the Alpha and the Omega", of the "Principium et finis - the beginning and the end" of the mystery of love which is expressed in the Word Incarnate.

St. Thomas invites us to know God better, in His Unity, in His Trinity, in His works.

Cannot this contemplation of the Blessed Trinity by faith and by the grace of the Holy Ghost, procure for us a foretaste, a fragrance of this happiness?

Here are some studies which can help complete or explain the teachings of the Summa:

The Divine Perfections, by Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange;
The Commentaries on the Summa Theologica of Fr. Pegues and of Fr. Hugon;
The Divine Names by Fr. Lessius;
God and The Trinity by Fr. Emmanuel;
Christ, Ideal of the Monk, Chapter I, by Abbot Marmion.

It is not here a question of making a theological study but of drawing a little nearer to the great reality that is God: before His attributes and infinite perfections, to adore with humility and ardent oblation in the imitation of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary.

A little more knowledge of God's infinity, and of His infinite Charity and Mercy should make us progress in the love of God, distancing us from sin, and confirming us in virtue. It is, moreover, also the path followed by all of the saints, under the influence of the Spirit of Jesus.

The Existence of God

Faith is the most certain knowledge to which we can refer. It teaches us the existence of God: "Credo in unum Deum Patrem omnipotentem creatorem coeli et terrae visibilium et invisibilium — I believe in one God, Father almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth, of the visible and the invisible".

Faith teaches that God is a Spirit: "Deus spiritus est." It is Our Lord Who taught this to the Samaritan. He is therefore an All-powerful Spirit Who created everything.

There was a time when the world did not exist, when God was alone in eternity, in His sanctity and His perfect and infinite happiness, having no need to create. Our Lord, at the beginning of His sacerdotal prayer, made reference to this period, "And now do Thou, Father, glorify me with Thyself, with the glory I had with Thee before the world existed" (Jn 17: 5).

Faith teaches us that reason can and should lead to the conclusion that God exists and St. Paul, in his first epistle (Rom l:18ff), reproaches men vehemently not to have known the true God, who declares Himself by His works.

In effect, everything which is, everything that we are, proclaims the existence of God and sings His divine perfections. All of the Old Testament, and particularly the Psalms and the Sapiential Books, sing the glory of the Creator. That is why the Psalms have a primordial place in liturgical and sacerdotal prayers.

It is good to meditate on the creation "ex nihilo sui et subjecti - made of nothing", by the simple decision of the Creator. "Qui putat se esse aliquid, cum nihil sit ipse se seducit - if any man thinks himself to be something, whereas he is nothing, he deceives himself (Gal 6:3).

The more one looks deeper into this reality, the more one is stupefied at the all-powerful nature of God and at our own nothingness, at the necessity for each creature of being constantly sustained in his existence, under pain of ceasing to exist, of returning to nothing. This is exactly what Faith and philosophy teach us.

Nothing but this meditation, and this realization, should plunge us into humility, and profound adoration, and establish ourselves immutably in this attitude like to the unchanging God Himself. We should be filled with unbounded trust, toward Him Who is All, and Who decided to create us and save us.

With what devotion and sincerity should we, every morning, at the beginning of Matins, recite Psalm 94: "Venite exsultemus... venite adoremus... quoniam ipsius est mare et ipse fecit illudet aridam fundaverunt manus ejus, venite adoremus et procidamus ante Deum, ploremus coram Domino, qui fecit nos, quia ipse est Dominus Deus noster, nos autempopulus ejus et oves pascuae ejus."¹

How can we not give thanks to the Church which places these words on our lips to express the most profound sentiments of our created souls! The souls of creatures!

If creation is a great mystery, it is that God is for us the Great Mystery and will remain so even in the Beatific Vision. "Nemo Deum vidit unquam nisi qui ex Deo est - No one hast seen the Father but he Who is of God" (Jn 6:46). Only the Word and the Holy Ghost see God, being of God, and one God with the Father.

A small glimpse on the attributes and perfections of God, spiritual reality which encompasses all, which enlivens all, which sustains everything in existence, cannot help but deepen the Divine Mystery, for our greater satisfaction, edification and sanctification.

St. Thomas said this: The more perfectly we know God here below, the better will we understand that He surpasses all that the mind can know (Ha Ilae q.8, a.3).

Faith coming to the aid of reason convinces us of the existence of God. It opens to us marvelous horizons on the intimacy of God by Revelation and especially by the Incarnation of the Divine Word. Thereupon we must ask to find out whether we can give God a name which would be proper to God and would help us to know Him better.

It is precisely this which God did in the Old Testament as in the New. These are the words of God to Moses: "But", said Moses to God, "when I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you', if they ask me, 'What is his name?' What am I to tell them?" God replied, "I Am Who Am". Then He added, "This is what you shall tell the Israelites: 'I Am' sent me to you" (Ex 3:13-14). And Our Lord expressed the same with regard to the Jews, who said to Him: '"Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?' Jesus said to them, 'Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I Am'" (Jn 8: 57-58).

We will never sufficiently admire these luminous responses, which correspond to the conclusions of our reason. "God is"; He is ens a se, Being by Himself; all other beings are ab alio and don't have the cause of their being in themselves.

These simple affirmations are an inexhaustible source of meditation and sanctification. May this be our gaze upon God, which loses itself in the infinite! Either beholding the relations of the creature to the Creator, or the nothingness of the creature, we are in the face of that which is the most true, the most profound and the most mysterious in God and in ourselves.

(to be continued)

1. "Come, let us rejoice ... Come, let us adore ... for the sea is His and He made it and His hands formed the dry land. Come let us adore and prostrate ourselves before God. Let us weep before the Lord Who made us, for He is the Lord our God and we are His people, the sheep of His pasture."