TANTUM ERGO
765 views · Published 19 November 2017 · 1:24 · Indexed 12 November 2026
Channel: francisxcc · 2017 · Nonprofits & Activism
WHY IS THERE SOMETHING INSTEAD OF NOTHING? A Catholic response: God - by definition - is perfectly complete within Himself, meaning, in need of nothing and no one. Yet, being the very personification of perfect love (which is intrinsically outgoing and unceasingly expressive), God gratuitously creates and sustains the universe. At the pinnacle of Creation God places man, who alone He uniquely creates in His own image and likeness, with a rational soul and a free will (to love – or not to love). What the Creator seeks most is to tryst, in perfect communion, with man, who is called to love Him - and his fellow men - with perfect (self-sacrificing) love. The root-meaning of the name 'God' (from Gothic root 'gheu'; Sanskrit 'hub' or 'emu', “to invoke or to sacrifice to”) is either “the one invoked” or “the one sacrificed to” (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06608x.htm). In the case of Christianity, God is not, of course, invoked with bloody sacrifice, but by the un-bloody sacrifice of man’s (and indeed the God Man’s) self donation. To this end – perfect communion with man – God Himself becomes incarnate, clothing Himself with human flesh and blood. In His incarnate self (Jesus Christ), God pledges to be with man until the end of time – really and truly present to him, in Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. The pinnacle of man’s union on earth with God is thus achieved via the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist. All this is to mean that man was created (and the universe for man) for the sublime purpose of Eucharist - the Sacrament of Unity, and Thanksgiving of the creature to his Creator. Without the Eucharist there would be no real reason for anything to exist, outside of God.
