God the Father made the initial step for man to enter into a relationship with Him. Thus we have stated earlier that God "calls men to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength." And until such time that we find, know and love Him with all our strength, we will never find rest. St Augustine says that God has made us for Himself and "our hearts are restless until it rests" in Him. It is therefore that longing for God, that desire to become one with Him, the creature being moved to return to the Creator, which moves our hearts to seek for things that will satisfy it. Unfortunately, man seeks for mundane, worldly and carnal satisfaction and closes his ears so that he won't hear the call of God.
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THE CREATION OF MAN.
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Being made in the image and likeness of God means sharing the spiritual and rational nature of the Father. We are a unique species, both spiritual and corporeal. Our spirituality makes us sharers of the divine essence; our corporeality makes us part of the physical universe. But even if we are a composite of body and soul, our ultimate desires are beyond the body for we are ultimately magnetized to move toward the satisfaction of our spiritual or rational appetites: ultimate knowledge and the ultimate happiness for nothing corporeal can satisfy our hunger for knowledge and happiness. In order for us to achieve this, God gave us our intellect so that we may seek for knowledge and ultimately, the Truth; and the will, so that we may search for the what will ultimately satisfy us our hunger for happiness, which ultimately lead us to the Good. By final and ultimate analysis, this Truth and Good lead us to God for only God and no one, and nothing else, is Truth and Goodness Himself: "Beside me there is no other!" [see Isaiah 43:11, 44:6, 45:5; Hosea 13:4]. Repeating what St Augustine said, our hearts are restless until it rests in God!
A Bishop told this story when I was still a seminarian:
"There was a young angel named Angelito who was so clumsy he couldn't do anything right. His fellow angels won't even try to give him any important work because he would only cause trouble than be of help. One day, while all the angels were gathered in the presence of the Almighty, God called Angelito to get the Mirror of Truth. Everyone wondered why of all those angels around, God would let Angelito bring the Mirror of Truth into the gathering when he was so clumsy. This made Angelito joyful, however, because God entrusted to him a very important thing. But as the other angels expected, before Angelito hands over the Mirror of Truth into the hands of God, he slipped and broke the Mirror into pieces. The broken pieces were scattered in various places of God's newly created earth. Angelito was so sad that once again he failed to show that he could be entrusted with important things to do for God. But to everyone's amusement God did not scold Angelito for what he did; in fact He smiled and said, 'Don't worry, Angelito. Because the Mirror of Truth has been broken and its parts scattered in various parts of the earth, man is given the opportunity to seek for the broken pieces of Truth and provided with the chance of connecting these pieces so that the Mirror of Truth would become whole again."
In Nostra Aetate, the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, in the beginning of number 2, it is stated that,
"From ancient times down to the present, there is found among various people a certain perception of that hidden power which hovers over the course of things and over the events of human history; at times some indeed have come to the recognition of a Supreme Being, or even of a Father. This perception and recognition penetrates their lives with a profound religious sense."
Hence God's offer of friendship, of intimate relationship, is not limited to one special race or group of people. The call is universal, that is why the Church is catholic, it is all-embracing, no one is disregarded, no one is prohibited from being a member of God's family. For fact is, we are all His children, first through Adam and Eve whom He created to be our first parents, and more significantly, through His only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who made us His children by becoming our brother. Hence Nostra Aetate also states in the second paragraph of number 1 that the two most important considerations why the Church should promote unity and love among all men are [1] we are all created by the one God, and [2] the same God is our common final goal.
Man must have recognized this fact very early in his existence for he has practiced religion in various ways. Actually, since man have been truly made by God for Himself, man would naturally seek God. We may say that this is perhaps man's way of putting together the broken pieces of Mirror of Truth which have fallen and scattered in many places of the earth. However, since man does not have the full capacity to know the divine truths, which make him aspire for earthly and mundane satisfaction only which cannot fulfill his higher appetites of intellect and will, for this capacity to attain the true knowledge of God and the attainment of God's goodness has been impeded by sin, God has to intervene in human history and in the fullness of time has sent His only begotten Son.
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