ANGELS, An All-Catholic Summary

By John Cannon

An enthralling summary of the very essence, the very nature of angels, how they differ from mankind, but how we share lives that are related to the Creator in similar ways, and interwoven with each other.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483540146

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THE NATURE OF MAN, AND HIS CREATOR

PART 1. MY WAY OF LIFE, Chapter 1

The road that stretches before the feet of a man is a challenge to his heart long before it tests the strength of his legs. Our destiny is to run to the edge of the world and beyond, off into the darkness: sure for all our blindness, secure for all our helplessness, strong for all our weaknesses, gaily in love for all the pressure on our hearts.

In that darkness beyond the world, we can begin to know the world and ourselves, though we see through the eyes of Another. We begin to understand that a man was not made to pace out his life behind the prison walls of nature, but to walk into the arms of God on a road that nature could never build.

Life must be lived, even by those who cannot find the courage to face it. In the living of it, every mind must meet the rebuff of mystery. To some men, this will be an exultant challenge: that so much can be known and truth not be exhausted, that so much is still to be learned, that truth is an ocean not to be contained in the pool of the human mind. To others, this is a humiliation not to be born; for it marks out sharply the limits of our proud minds. In the living of life, every mind must face the unyielding rock of reality, of a truth that does not bend to our whim or fantasy, of the rule that measures the life and mind of a man.

In the living of life every human heart must see problems awful with finality... the day-to-day, moment-to-moment choices of heaven or hell.... the dare of goals as high as God Himself to be accepted, or to be fled from in terror.

God has said so little that yet means so much for our living. To have said more would mean less of reverence by God to the splendor of His image in us. Our knowing and loving, He insists, must be our own; the truth ours because we have accepted it; the love ours because we have given it. We are made in His image. Our Maker will not smudge that image for our security, or by way of easing the hazards of the nobility of mankind.

Publishers note: This answers those who question God's very existence based on a charge that life is difficult. Love is complete only when returned with honest, selfless passionate concern for the loved one by the lover. Should God so overwhelm us so as to make our turning to Him beyond our refusal, or make dedication to Him effortless, then the value of our benevolent love and gratitude toward Him could not be valued, credited or rewarded. The person who humbly seeks the Almighty God, and is clean of heart (as referred to in the Beatitudes) and struggles to find Goodness and Truth, is identified.

Please bear in mind that two common words will be used repeatedly from here on that have a more inclusive meaning in philosophy:

GOODNESS:

The totality of real things,whether physical things or qualitative realities such as imagination, love and virtue, but excluding perversions of natural Goodness, such as sins of malice or willful, or reckless ignorance.

TRUTH:

The totality of all that can be known: without mistake or twist, without deception or perversion, without misanalysis or miscalculation, but with complete accuracy.

There are two great truths that we must keep in mind: perfection of God, and the perfectibility of man. Divine GOODNESS, and man's capacity to share that divine life. Without these truths we are paralyzed by lack of light. No man can get such wisdom about himself in time to begin living his life in fullness.This wisdom must be had not through the stumbling steps of his own reasoning, but he can have it from his Maker. Wisdom is leant by God and man can have his heart flooded with gratitude for the love. Some people do not know God and do not know that they are made for happiness. Ignorance commits us to frustration. There is a kind of knowledge of God buried deep in every man, as deep as his demand for happiness. But frustration here is basic, soul-searing, catastrophic. Man makes his way to the illusory havens offered by false gods, but always through a sea of tears shed by his own individual nature....

....Contact with man's own natural perfections provides recognition of his nobility and all of these are at once a joy, a surprise, and a rich promise. They entice us as do far horizons. They promise the heart and the mind long journeys and rich rewards. For these things have no fence about them; traces of them are the allures of the infinite, they are minute flakes of the precious perfection that belongs in fullness only to God. The stamp of intelligence is printed deep in the very being of the universe....

Publisher's note: The natural perfections referred to here are such things as : cleverness, discernment in judgments, intellectual inventiveness and all the virtues such as fortitude (bravery in danger), generosity, discipline in achieving goals, all such things limited in any one individual but expandable and perfectible.

....The book of Job describes God. He is higher than heaven, and what will you do? He is deeper than hell, and how will you know? The measure of Him is longer than the earth and broader than the sea. (11/8-9) There is profound truth in this if we understand the depth of God in His complete knowledge of hidden things; understand His height as the supreme power of His omnipotence; understand His length as the endlessness of eternity; understand His breadth as provident love embracing all things. For God is not to be reached by plunging into depths, or scaling heights, nor is He a physical bulk to be approached by steps of the body. He is everywhere and is to be approached by steps of the soul. It is in this same way that we abandon Him and take up our abode far from Him, though He is in us and about us. It is our heart, not our feet, that rushes to His embrace or flees His