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point, ‘for from the greatness and
beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of
their Creator’.’5
purify our language of everything in it
that is limited, image- bound or imperfect, if we are not to
confuse our image of God — 370 ‘the
inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the
Un— graspable’ — with our human
representations.’6 Our human words always fall short of
the mystery of God. 43 Admittedly, in
speaking about God like this, our language is
using human modes of expression; nevertheless it really
does attain
plicity. Likewise, we must recall that
‘between Creator and creature no similitude can be
expressed without implying an even greater
dissimilitude’;’7 and that ‘concerning God,
we cannot grasp what he is, but only what he is not, and how
other beings stand in relation to him.”8 44 Man is by nature and vocation a religious being. Coming from God, going toward God, man lives afully human life only ~f hefreely lives by his bond with God. 45 Man is made to live in communion with God in whom he finds happiness: ‘When I am completely united to you, there will be no more sorrow or trials; entirelyfull of you, my l~fe will be complete’ (St Augustine, Conf. 10, 28, 39: PL32, 795). 46 When he listens to the message of creation and to
the voice of conscience, man can arrive at certainty about
the existence of God, the cause and the end of everything.
47 The Church teaches that the one true God, our
Creator and Lord, can be known with certainty from his
works, by the natural light of human reason (cf Vatican
Council I, can. 2 § 1: DS 3026).
48 We really can name God, starting from the manifold
perfections of his creatures, which are likenesses of the
infinitely perfect God, even our limited language cannot
exhaust the mystery. 49 ‘Without the Creator, the creature
vanishes’ (CS 36). This is the reason why believers
know that the love of Christ urges them to bring the light
of the living God to those who do not know him or who reject
him.
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