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Chapter 2. God Comes to Meet Us • 13
inner life and his loving plan to save us from sin and share in his divine
life. No amount of unaided thinking could penetrate such a mystery.
God freely chose to share this hidden mystery with us. God’s sharing
was an act of friendship for us, revealing himself as one reveals his or her
heart to a friend. Love does such things.
God’s Revelation unfolded gradually throughout history. “Wishing
to open up the way to heavenly salvation, he manifested himself to our
first parents from the very beginning. After the fall, he buoyed them up
with the hope of salvation, by promising redemption” (Second Vatican
Council,
Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation
[
Dei Verbum
;
DV], no. 3; cf. Gn 3:15).
God continued over the succeeding centuries to provide providential
care for those he created in his image and likeness. He called Abraham
to make of him a great nation, a chosen people through whom salva-
tion would come to the world. In the encounter of God with Moses,
God reveals himself as “I am who am.” These words reveal something
about God, who, nevertheless, still remains mysterious. God is revealed
as the source of all that is, but who he is will be revealed still further as
he continues his loving work for his people. The prophets, in reflecting
on God’s actions, will make clearer the nature of God. But the clearest
Revelation will come in Jesus Christ.
“In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our ances-
tors; in these last days he spoke to us through a son” (Heb 1:1-2). This
Son was Jesus Christ, the fullness of Revelation. Wonderful indeed is
this mystery of our faith in Jesus Christ, as we say in professing it, “[He]
was manifested in the flesh, / vindicated in the Spirit; / seen by angels;
/ proclaimed to the Gentiles, / believed throughout the world, / taken up
in glory” (1 Tm 3:16).
Revelation is the self-disclosure of the living God. God shows himself
by both great deeds, as narrated for us in Scripture, and by the words
that illumine the meaning of these deeds (see DV, no. 2). In Revelation,
the tremendous gulf between God and the human race is bridged. More
profoundly God desires to have an intimate relationship with all people.
The process of Revelation, which took centuries to unfold, reached its
magnificent fulfillment in the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.