“Just Getting Started”

While recently reading a meditation by a Father Simeon, I noticed that he  had written a 4 volume commentary on  Matthew’s Gospel. No that is not a misprint…. 4 volumes …. 4 volumes on one book of the Bible…. woe. You may have heard of St. Thomas’s Summa.  The 5 Volume Summa Theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas is divided into three parts,  consisting of 38 tracts, 631 questions, 3000 articles, 10,000 objections and their answers… almost 2 million words.  It’s a compendium of all of the main theological teachings of the Catholic Church. Yikes. 

You may have noticed that I’ve taken a slightly different approach than St. Thomas and Fr. Simeon.  You may think of me as a man of few words. There could be two reasons for that… either I have an incredible ability to condense a mountain of complex information into a few words, or I don’t have a lot to say, so you don’t need a lot of words to say very little. Okay Dave,  where are you going with this…. what’s the point of this BLOG?” 

Well to be honest, whether it’s a short BLOG, a 4 volume commentary, or the Summa, we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of God’s wisdom and majesty and immensity.  It is said of St. Thomas Aquinas that “when he was nearly finished (with the Summa), he underwent a revelation so intense that, as he himself explained, “The end of my labors has come. All that I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me.“ Thomas realized that despite his excellent writings (even the Lord had told him “you have written well of me, Thomas”) he knew that he had hardly begun plumbing the depths of God.

Despite this understanding at times I can find myself acting like a renowned scripture scholar…. with my best King’s English commenting, “why yes, I believe I have a very significant understanding of God’s mind in regards to this and that……oh why yes, the parable of the weeds, let me see…. why any dolt can see that….”. Actually my voice has too much of a Missouri Twang to be confused with James Bond, but I think you get the picture. Whenever I get a bit too confident of my understanding, the Lord throws me a curve ball and I realize that my knowledge of God is “paper thin”.

A friend loaned me a  book on the life of Dietrich von Hildebrand, the famous Catholic philosopher and writer who Pope Pius XII referred to as a ” twentieth-century Doctor of the Church”. As his wife Alice is  relating stories about his relationships with a number of notable philosophers and their brilliant writings, I realized that I understood just enough to realize how little I actually know. But forget philosophy and think about the scriptures. Every time I take the time to read even a familiar passage, the Holy Spirit allows me to  see new insights, things I hadn’t thought of before, a side of God that I didn’t know. Someone suggested the diamond as a way to consider all of this….. as you look from different angles, the color and clarity and brilliance and beauty changes. 

Listen to this excerpt from the Book of Wisdom, “ your mastery over all things makes you lenient to all .… though you are master of might, you judge with clemency… and you taught that those who are just must be kind…” (Wis. 12:13-19)  We could spend hours pondering these few lines…. when someone’s power is mighty and overwhelming, there’s no need to demonstrate it; there’s a security and confidence in that power. Thinking about that passage can give further insight into the actions of God. 

Well if the Summa was “so much straw”, this insight is “so much half a molecule of floating fuzz” in relation to what God has revealed…. yet you could spend hours thinking about this passage and continue to find more insights…. different views from the diamond.

We have so much to look forward to, now and then eternity, to plumb the richness and majesty and love of Almighty God. What Good News.