Get Real

One response when one hears or encounters something that is outlandish or blatantly false is to say to the source, “Get real!” This is a way of saying “No way;” “That’s nonsense and b.s. (baloney sausage);” or “Give me a break if you think I am going to believe that”. Using the  word “real” indicates that one accepts this principle; what is real is true.

The Greek word for truth is “aletheia”. Aletheia was the goddess of truth in Greek mythology.  This word is used over a 100 times in the bible. It can be translated as “reality”. This word can also be translated as “revelation”, “disclosure”, or “being unconcealed”.

To share in the divine reality is to do those actions that are the result of us choosing freely to do good, actions that make good, that bring good into being, into reality.

Get good, get real.

For a believing Christian, what is real is more than the material world and what can be known through the senses.  Reality includes the mental, the spiritual, and the mysterious. A Christian’s knowledge of and belief in reality is based on more than what one has physically experienced. “Faith is the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).

The Unreality of Evil

God made everything and everyone that is real. “Get real” does NOT mean or include “Get evil”. God did not create evil and He does not cause evil.

What has been created by God, what and who has being, is good. Evil is not good and has no such being. There is no physical thing that is evil in its essence, in itself.

For St. Thomas Aquinas, evil is a “privation”, the absence of some good, a privation, of some good belonging to the nature of a creature (Summa Contra Gentiles, I, Q. xiv, a. 10; Q. xlix, a. 3;, III, ix, x). Goodness and being are the same” and “Every being, as being, is good” (Summa Theologiae, Prima Pars, Q. 5, Art. 1 & Art.3).

Get Real – Get Into Mystery

What is real goes beyond what can be known through the senses and, for Catholics, includes many dogmas, things, doctrines, and beliefs that are difficult or impossible to understand, verbalize, identify, or explain – in many cases, things that are mysterious.

When Catholics pray the rosary, they meditate on various mysteries as they pray – e.g., the Incarnation of Jesus when Mary responds affirmatively to The angel Gabriel’s announcing God’s invitation to her; the Eucharist; and Mary’s assumption. Catholics stand and recite a list of mysteries at Mass each time the Creed is recited. One does not say “I know” or “I can prove” these realities. One says “I believe,” for example, in God and in the Trinity, Redemption, Salvation, and the Communion of Saints.

After Job survives the onslaughts of Satan and the faulty views of his companions on the cause of his trials and sufferings, he gives us an insightful statement about the connection between our knowledge of God, the limits of the human mind, and our encounters with mystery:

Then Job replied to the Lord: “I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted. You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’  Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know” (Job 42:1-3).

It is interesting that Job does not try to think about God and then, coming up against what he cannot understand, reject mystery as unreal. Instead he realizes, after his encounters with God, that what he does not know is real, and, even though he cannot comprehend it, it is “wonderful.”  Such “getting real” about mystery requires an act of faith, e.g. Job’s saying to God, “I know that you can do all things.”

Each of us experiences things similar to those which Job experienced – events and things in our lives which appear inexplicable and things that are mysterious. From the nature of these things a person of faith does not conclude God is not real. Such a person comes to see and recognize that these mystifying things are true, leading to an acceptance of them as real, and then, as Job realized, wonderful.

Really Real Presence

One of the bedrock mysteries of Catholic faith is that Jesus is present in the Holy Eucharist. He is present also in the words of Holy Scripture, in the community of the Mystical Body of Christ, and in persona Christi in the ordained priest. But He is really real, all of Him, the total person of Jesus Christ, in Holy Communion. That is why this presence of Jesus, and no other, is called the “Real Presence.”

The mode of Christ’s presence under the Eucharistic species is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as “the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend.”  In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist “the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained.” “This presence is called ‘real’ — by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be ‘real’ too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to s  ay, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present”  (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1374).

For a Catholic, this presence of Jesus is life-giving. This life is eternal life:

Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day.  For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him (John 6:54-57).

Beyond simply being alive as a human being, this reality is life in Christ. As St. Luke tells us:

For in Him we live, and move, and have our being. (Acts 17:28).

Part of what we believe and cannot scientifically prove is that there is something after this life, it is forever, eternity, and, like God, from this moment we will live forever-we will be real forever. And in that eternity we will be in Him-we will partake of His nature, His reality.

St.Peter teaches us about this reality. He refers to  “partaking” of the divine nature:

As all things of his divine power which appertain to life and godliness, are given us, through the knowledge of him who hath called us by his own proper glory and virtue. By whom he hath given us most great and precious promises: that by these you may be made partakers of the divine nature: flying the corruption of that concupiscence which is in the world. (2 Peter 1:3-4; emphasis added)..

“Nature”  as used by St. Peter means the essence of a person or thing, the ground of reality, the principle of a person’s being. To partake of the nature of Jesus, His real presence, is to partake of Him body, blood, soul and divinity.

Get Real, Get Good

So, in order to share in the divine nature, God’s reality, as St. Peter tells us is possible, what do we do? St. Peter told us that Jesus has given us everything we need to achieve this share in the divine reality. He has given us all things that “appertain to life and godliness,” everything we need to do to share in the ultimate reality, to share in the reality of God. But this does not mean that we sit inert and do nothing to achieve this sharing with God.

What we need to do to share in the divine reality is to do those actions that are the result of us choosing freely to do good, actions that make good, that bring good into being, into reality.

Get good, get real.