Losing Oneself In God

How does one who is a sinner lose oneself in God?  This blogger does not know but tries to imagine it and puts down his thoughts as they enter his mind.

To lose oneself in God, one must know who God is, what God is and where God is.  Simultaneously, one needs to know how to fulfill "the first of all the commandments" [1]: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength." [2]

Who is God?  Nobody knows for certain who God is exactly.  Man knows God as the Creator of all things and as the Almighty One, but he does not know God well enough to know what God is likely thinking and doing at any moment.  God is far more than what the mind can imagine.  Therefore, no words can describe God fully since words necessarily confine God within the limits of human knowledge and intellect.

What is God?  As stated in John 4:8, "God is love." [3]

Where is God?  This blogger believes that God is everywhere simultaneously in timelessness even though there is nothing in the Bible that confirms specifically God's omnipresence.  However, Matthew 6:6 hints at it: "[W]hen you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you." [4]

God's complete and amorphous existence is both definite and indefinite.  Not knowing God's definiteness and indefiniteness concurrently, one cannot lose oneself in God without God's assent.  Jesus had said,"'No one comes to the Father except through me.'" [5]

Definiteness of God is made as clear as can be for man to understand by the life of God's only Son, Jesus Christ.  To lose oneself in the definiteness of the words spoken by Christ Himself is difficult enough, let alone suffer as He did.  This definiteness is the physical part that belongs to the world.

Beyond definiteness, there is the spiritual dimension that is unseen, that connects worldly existence to other-worldly existences and the finality of time to the infiniteness of eternity which is Heaven (or Hell for those who are already dammed).   To lose oneself in God's indefiniteness requires more than imagination; it requires Divine intervention.

Losing oneself in God's indefiniteness is to experience other-worldly experiences, but not all such experiences come from God--they can originate from Satan too.  Satan can mimic and mock God.  Therefore one has to be careful to not make a mistake and lose oneself in Satan, one that is easy to do because Satan is so smart in being deceitful.  Telling the difference between them requires unyielding faith in God and humble prayers.

Faith in and humility before God are two prerequisites needed to fulfill "the first of all commandments" which is to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength." [6]  Together they form the "second" simultaneous part to losing oneself in God.

By fulfilling these prerequisites, one is still unable to choose to lose oneself in God because of sin.  As a sinner, one is predisposed to sin.  Predisposition is not inevitability.  In other words, while one can fall easily into sin, one can choose not to.  How some people can avoid sin entirely, if they exist presently in this world, this blogger has no idea.  He can only assume that God has given them an abundance of grace.

The "Collect" part at the Latin Mass on Sunday, September 23, 2018, the Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost, reads in part as follows: (in English) "O Lord, direct our hearts: for without Thee we are not able to please Thee."  "Dómine, tuæ miseratiónis operátio: quia tibi sine te placére non póssumus." (in Latin) [7]

Thus, only by God's grace is a one who is a sinner able lose oneself in God.  There is no other way.


[1] http://www.usccb.org/bible/mark/12, at 28.  See also http://www.usccb.org/bible/matthew/22:1517, at 36.
[2] Ibid, at 30.  See also http://www.usccb.org/bible/matthew/22:1517, at 37-8, and http://www.usccb.org/bible/dt/6:5#05006005, at 5.
[3] http://www.usccb.org/bible/1john/4, at 8.
[4] http://www.usccb.org/bible/matthew/6, at 6.
[5] http://www.usccb.org/bible/john/14, at 6.
[6] Refer to footnotes [2] & [3] above.
[7] The Roman Catholic Daily Missal 1962. (2004). Kansas City, Missouri: Angelus Press, at 794.