The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 5: How We Know God (2026)

Episode Date: January 5, 2026

What can we know about God? The Catechism tells us three important things: 1) We can know God with our human reason, but 2) that knowledge will always be limited, and 3) we rely on God to reveal himself to us. Fr. Mike warns us that learning who God is requires self-surrender and abnegation, for the human heart struggles to recognize the infinite gap between Creator and created. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 36-43. This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in scripture, and passed down to the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a year is brought to you by Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the entire Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day five. And as a couple of reminders before we get started, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the foundations of faith approach, but you can follow along with this with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

So no problem whatsoever, but you can also follow along the reading plan by downloading your Catechism into your reading plan at ascensionpress.com slash C-I-Y. Also, you can click follow or subscribe or whatever in your podcast app to receive daily notifications and updates. And also, I just want to take a moment to thank all of you who have supported the production of this podcast with prayers and financial gifts literally could not do it without you. So thank you so much. As I said, it is day five.

We were reading from chapter one in the search, paragraphs 36 through 43. You know, yesterday we talked about how we can come to know God through the world. We can come to know God through looking in our human heart. Today, we're going to kind of launch forward and look a little bit more closely at that. We recognize that we can come to a knowledge of God's existence, God's reality, by the light of human reason. And kind of highlighting, yep, while we have the light of human reason that can apprehend, right, that can understand that God truly exists and even a bit of who God really is, we're going to be limited, which is one of the reasons why God has to reach out

and reveal himself to us. Also, we're going to talk about the language in which we speak of God is always going to be limited because, you know, God is, as the catechism will note from the liturgy of St. John Christosom, God is the inexpressible, he is the incomprehensible, he is the invisible, he is the ungraspable. And so, you know, how do we talk about God? We're going to look at that a little bit today. Before we launch in, let's say a prayer. Father in heaven, we give you praise. You are, you are the inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable. You are a mystery. You're the mystery of mysteries. And yet you reveal your heart to us. You reveal your identity to us in the world you created, in the human heart that beats inside

every one of our chests in our minds and in every everything you created, Lord, in some way points to you, our creator. Help us to get rid of all those things that get in the way. Help us to overcome those obstacles that can make it difficult to see you or difficult to acknowledge your goodness and open our hearts, open our minds to not only love and understand you, but also to let you love us. Jesus, name we pray. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, as I said, we are reading from chapter one in the search, paragraphs 36 to 43. The knowledge of God according to the church. The Second Vatican Council stated,

Our Holy Mother, the Church, holds and teaches that God, the first principle and last end of all things, can be known with certainty from the created world by the natural light of human reason. Without this capacity, man would not be. able to welcome God's revelation. Man has this capacity because he is created in the image of God. In the historical conditions in which he finds himself, however, man experiences many difficulties in coming to know God by the light of reason alone. Pope Pius X-12th once wrote, though human reason is, strictly speaking, truly capable by its own natural power and light of attaining to a true and certain knowledge of the one personal God who watches over and controls

the world by his providence, and of the natural law written in our hearts by the Creator. Yet, there are many obstacles which prevent reason from the effective and fruitful use of this inborn faculty. For the truths that concern the relations between God and man wholly transcend the visible order of things, and if they are translated into human action and influence it, they call for self-surrender and abnegation. The human mind, in its turn, is hampered in the attaining of such truths, not only by the impact of the sense of the sense of and the imagination, but also by disordered appetites, which are the consequences of original sin. So it happens that men in such matters easily persuade themselves that what they would not

like to be true is false, or at least doubtful. This is why man stands in need of being enlightened by God's revelation, not only about those things that exceed his understanding, but also about those religious and moral truths which of themselves are not beyond the grasp of human reason, so that even in the present condition of the human race, they can be known by all men with ease, with firm certainty, and with no admixture of error. How can we speak about God? In defending the ability of human reason to know God,

the Church is expressing her confidence in the possibility of speaking about him to all men and with all men, and therefore of dialogue with other religions, with philosophy and science, as well as with unbelievers and atheists. Since our knowledge of God is limited, our language about him is equally so. We can name God only by taking creatures as our starting point

and in accordance with our limited human ways of knowing and thinking. All creatures bear a certain resemblance to God, most especially man, created in the image and likeness of God. The manifold perfections of creatures, their truth, their goodness, their beauty, all reflect the infinite perfection of God. Consequently, we can name God by taking as creatures' perfections as our starting point. for from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their creator.

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 inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable, with our human representations. Our human words always fall short of the mystery of God.

admittedly, in speaking about God like this, our language is using human modes of expression. Nevertheless, it really does attain to God himself, though unable to express him in his infinite simplicity. Likewise, we must recall that between creator and creature, no similitude can be expressed without implying an even greater dissimilitude, 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. okay so that is paragraphs 36 through 43 and hope you caught the kind of I would say maybe the three main points that are communicated in this section one is that we can come to a knowledge of God through the light of human reason and and this is I think really

really important I mean obviously it's very important but one of the things it highlights is if you remember St. Paul's letter to the Romans chapter 1 St. Paul says that yes even those who have never heard of the living and true God will still experience consequences, experience judgment and say, wait, why? Paul says, well, because they have the light of human reason. They can look at the world around them and our human capacity for understanding and acknowledging and even coming to know in a certain sense, not only that God exists, but who he is, but the natural light of human reason is embedded in scripture there in St. Paul's letter to the Romans chapter one. And going on to say, without this capacity, the catechism says, without this capacity, you know,

that we can come to know God, we would not be able to welcome God's revelation. And we have this capacity because we're made in God's image. I love what Pope Pius I had written. It's a document called Humani Generous. And he says, though human reason is, strictly speaking, truly capable by its own natural power and light of attaining a true and certain knowledge of the one personal God. He says, yet there are many obstacles which prevent reason from the effective and fruitful use of this inborn faculty. For the truth that concern the relations between God and man, wholly transcend the visible order of things. That's so good. But he says, but this knowledge calls for self-surrender and abnegation. And we realize, oh, that's right. So when I come to know

that God is, then it means, oh, I'm not God. When I come to know who God is and who He is calling me be that calls for self-surrender and abdication. And the human heart does not want this. In fact, he goes on to write, the human mind in its turn is hampered in the attaining of these truths, not only by the impact of the senses and imagination, right? I mean, C.S. Lewis talks about this at one point. He talks about how faith can be a virtue. And one of the pieces there is he says, I can know something is true. This is in the book mere Christianity. C.S. Lewis says, I can know something is true and still experience fear. Like, I can know that there's no monsters underneath the bed, but I can have that moment where I hear something and think, wait,

is there? Pope Pius the 12th says, the human mind is hampered by the impact of the senses and imagination. I can sometimes, even if I know something is true, I can imagine it to be false. It goes on to say, are disordered appetites, right? So we have these consequences of original sin. We're going to talk about those later on. One of those is that I want what's not good for me, or I want to use what's good for me in a way that's not good for me or good for others. The other way to say it is Disordered Appetites And Pope Pius

the 12th says So it happens that us Here we are in such matters Easily persuade ourselves That what we would not like to be true Is false or at least doubtful And it's like yep I experienced that all of the time And I appreciate you pointing that out for me

But we go beyond this And recognize in the next section Of how can we speak about God This is the next part And the next part is the church saying essentially our knowledge of God is limited, even though he has revealed himself to us, even though we recognize we've received the fullness of revelation of God. Yet God is still, as we said before, the inexpressible, he is the incomprehensible, he's the invisible, he's the ungraspable, that all of our human

words will always fall short of who God actually and truly is. In fact, I remember there was a discussion with an atheist and a Christian, and it was, you know, kind of a publicized, maybe discussion slash debate. And at one point, the atheist acknowledged, and he said, listen, okay, I can acknowledge that maybe there is this ultimate ground of being, that from which all things flow. But if that's true, he is far more, this being is far more than any of us have ever imagined. And the Christian said, exactly, you are completely right. And that's what the catechism is saying now. When it comes to our language, you know, we're going to be using words we did all last year when it comes to the scripture, here's God revealing himself using human words, human language.

For the next year, we're going to be going through all these words describing God, describing our relationship with God, trying to capture into human language something and someone who is inexpressible and uncapurable. And so we recognize our language will always fall short. And yet, and yet this is so good, the last paragraph notes, and yet we try. And we try. He says, our language is using human modes of expression, yep, that's fine. Nevertheless, it really does attain to God himself. So it actually does reveal something to us about God. Yes, while almost all words when it comes to God are analogies, we recognize that while analogies point out similarities, there are always more dissimilarities than there are similarities. And we realize this. We had this quote from the

Lateran Council 4 that says that we know this. Between creator and creature, no similitude can be expressed without implying an even greater dissimilitude. And so, yeah, we have similarities between God who is the father and our fathers. Oh, that makes sense. There's a similarity, but the church is saying, yes, yes, yes. But there is also an even greater dissimilar. Dissimilar. They're always, they're more different than they are the same. I'll say I like that. Tomorrow, this is going to be great. Tomorrow is going to be one of those days where we get to go back over this whole first chapter and in brief. So it's going to be essentially six or so bullet point chapters.

And that's tomorrow. You have a little short. Maybe you might say half day, half day for it tomorrow. As we continue to read through the catechism, you guys, I am praying for you. We're only on day five, but we are trucking along. And I'm praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike.

I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.