Monthly Archives: April 2009

The Glory of God is Man Fully Alive

In looking for the context of this statement of Ireneus’s I discovered that it is actually used in the new Catholic catechism.  I like it there so much I will copy and paste it below.

As I suspected, the statement “The glory of God is man fully alive,” taken out of context can be deceiving.  It seems to imply that the way to glorify God is to just be yourself and follow your heart.  Now, being yourself is very important — just look at what happens when you try to be someone else — but it’s important to remember that the only way to truly be yourself, a created being, is through and for the One who created you. 

The glory of God is man fully alive, but man fully alive is man glorifying God.

But I have better words waiting in my clipboard.

NEW CATHOLIC CATECHISM

|ARTICLE NO. 293

Scripture and Tradition never cease to teach and celebrate this fundamental truth: “The world was made for the glory of God.” St. Bonaventure explains that God created all things “not to increase His glory, but to show it forth and to communicate it,” for God has no other reason for creating than His love and goodness: St. Thomas expresses it thusly. “Creatures came into existence when the key of love opened His hand.” The First Vatican Council explains:

This one, true God, of his own goodness and “almighty power,” not for increasing his own beatitude, nor for attaining his perfection, but in order to manifest this perfection through the benefits which he bestows on creatures, with absolute freedom of counsel “and from the beginning of time, made out of nothing both orders of creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal…”

ARTICLE NO. 294

The glory of God consists in the realization of this manifestation and communication of His goodness, for which the world was created. God made us “to be His sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace,”(Eph. 1:5-6) for as St Irenaeus states; “the glory of God is man fully alive; moreover man’s life is the vision of god: if God’s revelation through creation has already obtained life for all the beings that dwell on earth, how much more will the Word’s manifestation of the Father obtain life for those who see God.” The ultimate purpose of creation is that God “who is the creator of all things may at last be all in all, thus simultaneously assuring His own glory and our beatitude.”(1 Cor.15: 28)

Antediluvian ~ Third in a series of words I like a lot.

Although this term can refer to the period before any major flood, it most often means the Noachian flood.  And out of that comes its meaning of extremely old or ancient.  I love the sound of the word itself — the great downward and backward cast of your tongue on the forth syllable has something of a deluge feel to it, I think.  And then, of course, there are wonderful applications such as this example given in the Princeton dictionary:   “a ramshackle antediluvian tenement.”

I would caution writers that this is an adjective very difficult to pull off without sounding pedantic.  If you want my advice, save it for casual conversation such as, “My, that tenement is ramshackle and antediluvian.”

West Keag

There was a bridge over a narrow part of a tidal river in Maine, called West Keag, or The Keag, or just “The Gig.” Every day for about five hours the water would flow violently in one direction under the bridge. Then there would be a slowing, then a pause and a gathering of lunar energy and impulse, and the water would begin to flow slowly, then faster and faster in the other direction. It was a fascinating thing to watch. A couple of miles from that spot was the cove where I would sneak off season and park by the summer people’s abandoned cotteges to watch the stars. It was the darkest place I had ever been in the US: One of my friends had a panic attack there because it was so dark and quiet, and another friend heard Jesus speak to her for the first time. The only other sound (and the only one that I heard until she screamed) was the gentle ka-thump of the waves on the wall below us. Water looks so deep in the dark, as if “deep” were more than a descriptor but an actual noun, like “the deep.” As if tumbling from the four foot rock wall into the black water would result not in wetness but in a neverending fall, cut off forever from earth and its gravity, subject only to the diurnal pull of the moon and the stars.

Lorem ipsum, first in a series of words and terms that I enjoy.

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