July 6, 2005
Why are we here?
Isn’t this the ultimate question: what purpose do we serve? In other words, why did God make us? I’m not just asking why God created the earth and people, I’m asking, why did God create you? Why do you exist and why have you been allowed to live this long?
It’s an interesting question because it is so personal. It’s also difficult to get your hands around an answer, since by definition the answer will require more from you. If you exist for a reason, that implies obligation, particularly to God. If God specifically created you in this time and place, rather than another, then He must have a divine reason behind that choice. Are you fulfilling the need God had when He created you?
In the old Baltimore Catechism, we find the answers in fairly simple language:
Why did God make us? God made us to show forth His goodness and to share with us His everlasting happiness in heaven.
That explains why God made the world and populated it, but why did he make you? This is a significantly more difficult question to answer, since it would be a different answer for each of us. As unique creations of God, we each were created for unique reasons. Reasons, by the way, that are divine, rather than human, which means it would it impossible for us to give a full answer for each of our existences.
Perhaps one reason for our existence is to simply smile at another person on a very specific day. Or to brighten someone else’s afternoon on one day in July. We will never know until – and unless – we get to heaven. However, we can know some of the reasons God created us. The Baltimore Catechism is also famous for the quote “to know, love, and serve God,” which sums up the reason for our existence. The Catholic Catechism starts out with:
CCC 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.
To add on, we have specific obligations handed down from God. Both norms and obligations – from the Ten Commandments to the requirement that we go and make disciples of all men. Outside of this, only prayer can light our way. Only an absolute trust that God will guide us to complete the tasks he has for us. In other words, complete faith.
This is extremely difficult for modern Americans. We are taught to be independent, to question authority, to fight for our rights. Yet God calls us to be humble, loving, forgiving, and self-sacrificing, among other things. Ask yourself this, if you were accused of a crime you didn’t commit and jailed, could you quietly pray and trust in God that it was His Will that put you in jail? Could you assume that God had a reason for you to be in that place at that time? There are Saints that have refused to defend themselves, believing that God would free them when the time was right. That is faith. Faith is not using contraception and trusting that you will only get pregnant when God chooses to give you a child. Faith is living up to your Christian obligation even when it requires real sacrifice. Why are you here? Do you trust God to answer that for you?
God bless,
Jay
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