May 13, 2009

Q: Does God need us?

A: God is love (1 Jn 4:8). In his boundless goodness, God desired a creature made in his own “image and likeness” (Gn 1:26); one, like himself, who could also love and thus share the divine life. The “Catechism of the Catholic Church” says: “God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life” (No. 1) and “Man is the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake” (No. 356).

God does not “need” us in the sense that he is somehow dependent on us or incomplete without us. But God does desire us. More precisely, God desires to give himself to us. C.S. Lewis said it beautifully, “In God there is no hunger that needs to be filled; only plenteousness that desires to give.”   The yearning of God for man is illustrated in the story of Adam and Eve who, after eating the forbidden fruit hid themselves from God. Not abandoning them to sin, however, God sought them, saying, “Where are you?”  In the fullness of time, God became man to seek and save the lost (Lk 19:10).  Expressing his desire for each and every person, Jesus said to the woman at the well, “Give me something to drink” (Jn 4:7). Jesus’ thirst, the Catechism tells us, “arises from the depths of God’s desire for us. God thirsts that we may thirst for him” (No. 2560).

This week’s apologist is James Cavanagh, director of Evangelization and Catechesis for Metro Area Parishes and writer of the Denver Catholic Register’s Breaking Open the Word Scripture reflections.