Filling the existential void

Many of us are familiar with those famous words of St. Augustine: "Our hearts are restless till they find rest in you." These words indicate that we are actually made for God who created us in his image and likeness and to be children of his through his grace which he gives us abundantly.

That's why there's actually a natural longing that we have for God. Thus, the Catechism teaches that "the desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God." Besides, "God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for." (CCC 27)

The problem is that we can tend to deceptively pacify that longing, atleast for a while, with our own versions of God or with a series of worldly things. This is where we can talk about the so-called "existential void," that many philosophers and thinkers of our time have already acknowledged and yet cannot be clear yet as to how it can be filled. Only God can fill that void, God who is everything to us.

The problem is that in our effort to look for God, we find it hard to have a God outside of ourselves, that is, a God who transcends our senses, feelings and understanding. We want a God who is under our power. If we cannot fully know or understand him, then he cannot be God.

As a consequence, people who do not believe in God or who has another god aside from the true God, behave in an alienated way. They can entertain themselves with all sorts of earthly things, but joy and peace will continue to elude them. They can fake that joy and peace, but sooner or later, the falsity just cannot cope with the challenges, issues, problems in life.

At least in ancient biblical times, the false idols were easily recognized. They were clearly man-made, graven images that had mouths that did not speak, ears that did not hear, eyes that did not see.

Though they managed to mesmerize people for a while, it did not take long to expose them to be false.

Today's gods are more subtle. They are not objects that one can see and touch. They too appear to be spiritual. They seem to have mouths that speak, ears that hear and eyes that see. But really, they are nothing other than figments of our imagination, projections of what we want. In short, today's gods are we ourselves.

These gods can manage to engage us in some substantial dialogue.

Usually in terms of what is practical, what is popular, what brings wealth, power and fame. The effect is that instead of going beyond ourselves to look for the God who created us, we enter more deeply into ourselves to make ourselves our own creator.

In short, we become more alienated from the true God who is our Creator and Father. No matter what we do, what we accomplish, there is still that existential void that will continue to haunt us.

But as our Catechism teaches:

"God transcends all creatures. We must therefore continually purify our language of everything in it that is limited, image-bound or imperfect, if we are not to confuse our image of God–'the in expressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable'–with our human representations. Our human words always fall short of the mystery of God." (CCC 42)

We need to strengthen our faith in the fatherhood of God or in our spirit of divine filiation. Again our Catechism teaches us that: "By calling God 'Father,' the language of faith indicates two main things–that God is the first origin of everything and transcendent authority, and that he is at the same time goodness and loving care for all his children." (CCC 239)

Like a child who unquestioningly trusts his father though he does not understand many things and how his father takes care of him, we should have the same trust in God whose will and ways are both knowable tous, at least in part, and mysterious on the whole. We just go with him, doing what we can do but leaving everything in him because of that filial trust.

As Father, God will never leave us alone. One of the consequences of divine filiation is the guarantee that God will not permit anyone to separate from him, as long as we don't want to. On the contrary, through his power and mercy, he will convert everything, including our negative things, into something for the good of all.