Cathal Barry
Only faith can embrace God’s power
Of all the divine attributes, only God’s power is named in the Creed. To confess this power has great bearing on our lives. The Church believes that his might is universal, for God who created everything also rules everything and can do everything.
The Scriptures repeatedly confess the universal power of God. He is called the “Mighty One of Jacob”, the “Lord of hosts”, the “strong and mighty” one. The Church teaches that if God is almighty “in Heaven and on earth”, it is because he made them. “Nothing is impossible with God, who disposes his works according to his will,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church states.
“He is the Lord of the universe, whose order he established and which remains wholly subject to him and at his disposal. He is master of history, governing hearts and events in keeping with his will.”
Fatherhood
The Church believes God is the Father Almighty, whose fatherhood and power shed light on one another: God reveals his fatherly ‘omnipotence’ by the way he takes care of our needs; by the filial adoption that he gives us and finally by his infinite mercy, for he displays his power at its height by freely forgiving sins.
Thomas Aquinas points out that God’s almighty power is in no way arbitrary: “In God, power, essence, will, intellect, wisdom, and justice are all identical. Nothing therefore can be in God’s power which could not be in his just will or his wise intellect.”
The Catechism notes that faith in God can be put to the test by the experience of evil and suffering. “God can sometimes seem to be absent and incapable of stopping evil. But in the most mysterious way God the Father has revealed his almighty power in the voluntary humiliation and Resurrection of his Son, by which he conquered evil,” it says.
Christ crucified is thus “the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:24-25). It is in Christ’s Resurrection and exaltation that the Father has shown forth “the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe” (Ephesians 1:19-22).
Only faith, according to the Church, can embrace the mysterious ways of God’s almighty power. This faith glories in its weaknesses in order to draw to itself Christ’s power. The Virgin Mary is the supreme model of this faith, for she believed that “nothing will be impossible with God”, and was able to magnify the Lord: “For he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name” (Luke 1:37-49).
As the Roman Catechism states: “Nothing is more apt to confirm our faith and hope than holding it fixed in our minds that nothing is impossible with God. Once our reason has grasped the idea of God’s almighty power, it will easily and without any hesitation admit everything that [the Creed] will afterwards propose for us to believe – even if they be great and marvellous things, far above the ordinary laws of nature.”
