Not Just Trite Phrases

So I realize that I ought perhaps to give more information on the title of this blog, why I chose what I did and what the description means beneath it. Here is the fruit of that revelation:

Know Him, Love Him. Using this blog, I seek to understand a little more with each experience, each book read, each truth learned, each prayer uttered. What do I try to understand?

What is. What is true.

So often we stop with science, broadly defined as getting to know better what things are (what the poem is about, what the human body is doing, what the culture does) - do we stop to see if things are true? St. Thomas Aquinas sees the importance of both steps of the understanding, and I think we also can see this today. (If you want to know where he says this, post a comment.) For example, why aren't Catholics 'tolerant' as the world describes that word? (I don't advocate defining it this way, but I know we have all encountered someone who has struggled with the idea that we Catholics are close-minded, or perhaps we have struggled with it ourselves.) Why? Because they admit that there is truth and untruth. The truth is good and untruth is bad, because it is not true and good. Hence, we as Catholics believe that homosexual acts are bad. What is bad ought not to be done. But in the eyes of the world, we cannot deem that what someone struggling with homosexual tendencies is doing is wrong - who are we to know what is right or wrong? This opinion, on the contrary, asserts that we say this only out of our own socio-cultural perspective, and since we have observed that not everyone lives the same way everywhere, but differ by culture, we cannot say that one is better than the other - who are we to know?

On the other hand, Catholics do have the Church. We do have the Truth. We do know. We don't claim that we know because we are super-smart or even because we are worthy of knowing. No, indeed! We are simply the blessed people that the Lord has chosen as His new Israel, chosen to reveal the Truth about Himself. God, the Truth Himself, has given us the truth by His Word - and, after all, Truth Himself speaks truly, or there's nothing true (line of the hymn Adore Te Devote in English, 'Godhead Here in Hiding' -the second link has notes).

But here's the catch. The Church knows. Do you? I don't. I mean, I'd like to think I have the sense of faith, since I know that God has called me to His Church, but there is so much about the Church and Her Bridegroom Christ the Lord that I do not understand. But if I could, if I could grow to know Him a bit more, to know more fully that He is God (perhaps by trusting Him in a situation or learning something new about Him), and know that He is truly God, "true God from true God"... then I will love Him better. The link between knowing Him and loving Him has been explored by some of the greatest saints in the Church, but I think that even if we 'normal' American Catholics cannot justify it, we still understand that there is a link between getting to know God better and being able to love Him better. Perhaps we'll explore this in later posts. But we know that we cannot love someone we don't know, and we know that we love our friends more as we get to know them more.

Hence, I seek to know God better. Why? Because I want to love Him better, and He has called me to know Him quite intimately. How do I know He's called me - is this something special for me? No, it's something common to all men and women. We have been given the ability to reason, to know God in a way that other creatures cannot. Which is where you all come in. See, I don't want this to just be me writing what's on my mind - I was never much for diaries. I would like to post something that you find thought-provoking (God-willing), something that makes you want to pray and respond. So please - leave a comment!

One last thing: On the quotes I mention in my subtitle/description...
"To know Him is to love Him" is a quote from St. Augustine, and, one might add, a major theme in his works that St. Thomas Aquinas, among others, picks up again many centuries later and develops in his work Summa Theologica (not what you'd call light or easy reading).
"Ignorance of Scriptures is ignorance of Christ" is a particularly cutting quote by St. Jerome, who translated most of the Bible into the Latin version that we know as the Vulgate. I will hopefully get the chance to talk more about this quote later.