When I say God, what do think of?

For some people, it’s an old man in the clouds with a white beard.

For others, it’s a powerful being somewhere “out there.”

For some, it’s just a vague force. But the Catholic tradition gives us something far deeper.

In the Old Testament, when Moses asks God His name in Exodus, God responds:

“I AM WHO AM.”

God is not a being inside the universe.

God is not one powerful thing among many things.

God is the act of Being Itself.

Sometimes those that rejects the idea of God, like to position God as a large creature in the sky.

But don’t confuse rejecting a cartoon version of God with rejecting the God of classical Christian thought.

If God is just a large creature in the sky, the objections make sense.

If God is the infinite act of existence, eternal love, and the source of all being; the conversation becomes much deeper

God is not a superhuman inside the universe.

He is the reason the universe exists at all.

He does not “compete” with nature the way one creature competes with another.

If God withdrew His sustaining presence for even a moment, nothing would remain.

The great theologian Thomas Aquinas said that God is the sheer act of existence itself. Everything you see:

The trees

The stars

Your own thoughts

Your beating heart

all of it exists because God is continuously holding it in existence.

If God stopped willing you to exist for even a moment, you would not die you would simply cease to be.

If I could put it another way God doesn’t just write the software of the universe and press “run”. He sustains the code itself. If God stopped willing creation for even a moment, the whole software program would disappear.

But here is what makes Christianity radical: This infinite, eternal, self-sustaining act of Being is not an impersonal force. As we read in John…… “God is love.”

When we say God is love, we don’t mean love the way the world often talks about it, like romance, attraction, or simply strong feelings. Feelings come and go, but love is something deeper.

As Bishop Robert Barron often explains love is “willing the good of the other.” That might sound bland, but in other words, true love means wanting what is truly good for another person and choosing to act for their good, even when it costs us something. Sometimes that happens in big heroic ways, but most often it happens in the tiny micro-decisions in everyday life. Being patient, forgiving someone, helping when it is inconvenient, or choosing kindness instead of selfishness.

And so if God is love when we choose to love in this self emptying way, God is present in that moment.

You see real love is not mainly about what we feel; it is about giving ourselves.

So when we say God is love, we mean that God is the perfect giver of Himself. From the beginning of creation, God desires our good and continually gives Himself to us.

So when we say: God is everywhere, God sustains everything, God knows everything

we are not describing a cosmic dictator. We are describing the infinite act of Love that allows you to exist at this very moment. And here’s what that means: You are not an accident. You are not random matter.

You are a thought eternally known and loved in the mind of God, and his loving mind:

brought you to life.

God the Creator

Now, nearly every ancient civilization had a story about how the world began. The Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, and many others told stories of creation filled with conflict, gods battling one another, chaos struggling against order, and the world emerging from violence or accident. In many of these stories, humans were created almost as an afterthought, often to serve the gods or relieve them of labor.

The opening of Genesis is strikingly different.

Instead of chaos and conflict among many gods, the Bible begins with one God who creates deliberately and peacefully. There is no struggle, no rival deity, no cosmic battle. God simply speaks: “Let there be…” and creation comes into existence. The universe is not the result of war or chance, it is the result of intention.

Even more remarkable is what Genesis says about humanity. In ancient myths, humans were often created to be servants of the gods. But in Genesis, mankind is created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:27). This gives human life an extraordinary dignity. Humanity is not an accident and not a servant, we are meant to reflect God himself.

Genesis also describes creation as good. After each act of creation, God sees that it is good, and after creating humanity, he calls it very good. In a world where many ancient religions viewed matter as chaotic or even evil, Genesis declares that the physical world is part of God’s good design.

These opening lines reveal something important about the Father. God is not distant, or jealous like the gods of ancient myths. He is a loving creator who brings order from nothing, beauty from emptiness,

and life from his own creative will.

Creation, then, is not just the beginning of the Bible, it is the beginning of a relationship. The same God who spoke the stars into existence also created humanity to know him, love him, and live in communion with him.

God is an artist, and the universe is His work of art

-St. Thomas Aquinas-