A man took his ax and felled a tree. He sawed the wood, dried it and seasoned it, cut and shaped and polished it, and ultimately made of it a handsome set of bookshelves. He was rather proud of his handiwork and liked to show it to visitors and explain, modestly enough, that it was his own, in every sense, since he and he alone had transformed it from a tree to its present condition.
It was not quite accurate, though, to say that he alone had made that set of shelves. He never could have done it without the wood, and where did the wood come from? He could not have planed and polished and joined the pieces without intelligence and skill, and who gave him that intelligence and where did he acquire that skill, and how ?
Yet he is proud, legitimately enough, of his achievement; and if you presume to take it from its place and walk off with it, he will follow hotly after you and demand an explanation. You are taking something that belongs to him.
One of the profoundest thoughts that can occupy a man's mind and form his character as a Catholic is the everpresent remembrance of his "belongingness" to God, his Creator. Remedies are advocated and speeches are made and books are turned out, all with the object of providing a remedy for the almost universal chaos that surrounds us. The great question, it would seem, is: How can we give men what they want? How make them contented? How restore order? But before discussing what men want or what men quarrel about, it is more fundamental still to discover what is man himself.
You do not treat a poodle as you treat your child, and one reason is that a poodle has one nature and your child another. What is man's nature? What does the sum total of all that makes him a man demand in order that he may satisfy the legitimate aspirations of his nature? What am I, as a man, kneeling here in prayer?
I am, first of all, a creature of God. I am here, seated in this office, reading this book, for one only reason _ that God called me forth a certain number of years ago and put me on this earth and decreed I was to live in this place for a period of time that He has fixed definitely for me. Unlike the carpenter, God did not draw me forth from other preexisting material. Up to the moment I was conceived in my mother's womb there was nothing. At the next moment my life began because God willed my life to begin.
When once the carpenter has set up his shelves, they remain there; they do not need him in any way; he can forget all about them and they still continue to be. But my creaturehood is immeasurably more dependent. Not only has my God drawn me forth out of nothingness, but He must continue to uphold me from every single second to the next. I have just turned a page of this book; I could not have turned that page, nor even have had the idea of turning it, without God. The phone there on my desk has just rung. I could not have heard it, I could not have understood its significance, I would not have taken the message correctly or replied intelligently, without God.
The thought of the dependence of me as a man on my Creator is almost paralyzing to contemplate. It is impossible to exaggerate. It is the most complete and absolute imaginable. It shatters that foolish pride and silly selfsufficiency that parade before the world as independence and power. We have only to reflect on the vanity of so many men who set themselves up as idols. What holds the eyes of men that we fail to see the futility of so much boasting? One thinks of Stalin and his world domination; of Hitler and his insatiable lust for power; of Mussolini, the "savior" of his people.
These men were an egregious failure, despite fleeting success, because they were ignorant, or feigned to be ignorant, of their creaturehood. There is no other rational basis for man except in a practical recognition of his absolute and entire dependence on God. Acknowledgment of this is adoration, and the thing created must bend low in reverent acknowledgment of the Creator.
Jesus, You enunciated this principle when You spoke to the tempter and said: "The Lord thy God thou shalt adore and Him only shalt thou serve." Time was when that truth was taken for granted. It is no longer taken for granted. As a Catholic layman I must uphold it in the practical dealings of my daily life. Teach me how and with Your divine grace strengthen me to act up to my Catholic conscience.