Realism + Optimism = Catholicism.
Think about it. The best conceivable situation of the world is that its Omnipotent Creator is intimately concerned with delivering you to eternal happiness in the bliss of Love. Yet, we live in a world where real love is sometimes hard to find. What gives?
The Catechism teaches that, in man’s disobedience of God, man
preferred himself to God. He wanted to be like God but apart from and not in accordance with God. Man wanted autonomy from God; man became his own God. We see the consequences of this act all around us; we live in an effectively godless world where people do essentially what’s right in their own eyes, no longer in communion with or led by the Spirit of God, often with harmful results to others as selfishness becomes the determining factor instead. Some of the worst atrocities are even committed in the name of God; all wrong is done in the name of right, all wrong is evil that has been justified (made right) by self-righteous man.
This state of separation from our Creator is how we’re born, and this is called spiritual death, the “death of the soul”. It constitutes a great injustice, a disharmony in the natural order of Gods universe. And this is why we need to be born from above, to newness of life. Jesus came to show us both the need for this conversion as well as the means for achieving it. And it begins, on our part, with faith, faith in God rather than ourselves.
The Incarnation through to the Atonement and Resurrection has as it’s purpose the definitive demonstration of 1) God’s existence 2) God’s power 3) God’s incomparable trustworthiness (the Catechism teaches that trust had
died in man’s heart, and this without reason or provocation) 4) God’s absolute, boundless, unconditional love for man, in spite of mans hatred for Him. The passion and crucifixion reveal the reality and true motive and ugliness of sin-human sin that would desire to be rid of the genuine righteousness/purity/beauty/innocence/light that would expose it and challenge it’s right to exist. But Christ’s act simultaneously
forgives the very sin that it reveals, the very sin that would cause Him to suffer, the sin that’s grieved God from the beginning. Even this sin won’t dampen Gods infinite love for man.
The purpose of Christ’s act is
atonement, literally at-one-ment, reconciliation via the righteous dying for the unrighteousness. Man does nothing except to recognize and embrace his need for God, and the restoration of a relationship shattered at the Fall can begin to take place, man and God
commune again. And the Resurrection is part and parcel of this atonement as it answers the other problem-the problem of death; this relationship is meant to be eternal.
So the answer to your question is that God, like the Father in the story of the Prodigal Son, is simply waiting with open arms for us to wake up and run from our pigsty, our world where anything but love usually runs the show, after developing a thirst for Love and the eternal Bliss it promises. That’s why we’re in this world.
