Further Ado (By Louise)
Re: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
“Therefore, without further ado, I present to you our illustrious writer, Louise!”
A reader has asked us to clarify some of the things Boniface mentioned in a previous article.
If God is omnipresent, then how can we have a “God shaped hole”? Is he not all-present? Or is there something else?
This is how I understand the analogy of the God-shaped hole.
Yes, God is omnipresent. However, we can speak of God’s presence in different ways. Since God is personal (One God, Three Divine Persons), He presents Himself to us personally in varying ways. The Bible speaks of God walking in the garden with Adam and Eve—a very personal interaction. Moses sees and hears God in a burning bush—less personal, but still an interaction. In fact, Moses’ interaction with God gets more personal as time goes on, yet never approaches the level of “walking in the garden”. In Exodus 33 God promises his presence but tells Moses he cannot see his face.
So when Adam and Eve are banished from the garden, “walking with God” ceases. They have chosen their independence from Him. However, they were created FOR life with God so the absence of that intimacy leaves a hole—a longing, and an inability to to fill it on their own. This condition, accompanied by the tendency to choose one’s own desires over God, is passed along from generation to generation simply because it isn’t in their power to overcome. Original sin is then understood as a state of being, rather than an act. It stems from an act, but is passed on as a human condition. —Adam and Eve can’t, on their own, change this condition even if they really wanted to—which is doubtful. It is not long before the only righteous man on earth is Noah. It is as if the independence chosen by Adam and Eve is addictive.
The answer must come from God. The Father sends his only begotten Son (the Second Person of the Trinity) to take on human flesh and pay the price for all the sins of the world for all time by being an innocent sacrifice on a cross. The debt is paid and God comes to dwell in each soul, by invitation, in Baptism. What remains is a tendency to desire our own will over God’s, but he does not withdraw his presence from our soul unless we demand it.
Now the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve CAN choose to fill that longing for relationship with God, which remains difficult to see in this earthly life, but is nonetheless real. In fact, the level of intimacy involved in this sacramental presence is higher than Moses’ experience in the tent of meeting, and even than the walk in the garden that Adam and Eve enjoyed. However, it is still not complete, we are still left wanting more. Though God, in reality, lives in your soul in a personal way since the moment of baptism (and for as long as you wish him to—he is a Gentleman and will never force himself on someone who does not want him), we still long for that union between God and our soul to be complete in heaven. Augustine’s mention of the longing for God—our hearts are restless until they rest in you—speaks to the longing for heaven. The union with God in eternity is complete. The God shaped hole is perfectly filled.