VATICAN CITY (Catholic Online) - The Paschal Season concluded last Sunday with the celebration of Pentecost, and this week's liturgy cannot help but draw further treasure from the mysteries of Christ's life and teaching.  Today we are called to become more aware of the Good News that Christianity brings. 

From the Nativity to Pentecost - from the birth of the Saviour in Bethlehem to his death, resurrection and ascension, and ultimately his sending of the gift of the Holy Spirit - our conception of God has been radically changed.  By the gift of his grace, rather than our merit, it has been made possible for us to know the true God: one in essence yet three persons.

It's as if Moses is asking us the question which we hear in the first reading. "Ask now of the days of old, before your time, ever since God created humankind upon the earth; ask from one end of the sky to the other: Did anything so great ever happen before? Was it ever heard of?" (Dt 4:32).  God has spoken to us, he has revealed to us his Eternal Word, Jesus Christ.  He has chosen us from among the nations as his own, redeemed us with the blood of his Son and has given us the gift of the Spirit (cfr 2 Cor 1,22).  He has done all this before our very eyes.

The certainty and hope that come from this divine predilection allows us to reflect briefly on the way that our own times deals with the 'question' of God.

We have said that the mysteries of Christmas and Pentecost have given humanity a true conception of God.  Obviously, this gift is only for those who have received it.  As St John in the Prologue to his Gospel writes; those to whom 'he gave power to become children of God'(Jn 1:12).  We cannot contemplate the mystery of the Holy Trinity as if we were spectators in an art gallery looking at a painting.  We can only see that mystery from within a friendship with Christ which draws into the same divine filiation through the gift of the Spirit.

However, if knowledge of the 'true' God is given only to those who accept Christ, does that mean that outside the Gospel there is no way for humanity come to a knowledge of the existence of God?  Is the atheism of the Western world entirely down to a failure to spread the Gospel?  No!

For the Church, the evangelical mission is necessary - it is derived from the Church's own nature.  Today it is even more urgent as the Pope Benedict has noted by establishing a Pontifical Council for 'New Evangelisation' in the last couple of years and by proclaiming a Year of Faith which begins on October 11th this year. 

However, our culture's 'crisis' in its knowledge of God goes beyond a lack of evangelisation.  It is rooted primarily in a 'crisis' of reason, which seems to be impervious to reality and to the Gospel.  Humans had affirmed the existence of one God several centuries before Christ's coming, and understood God to be the origin and end of all that exists. 

Today, though, our culture seems unable to express this knowledge.  It is as if the argument is impossible to deal with.  The existence of God is considered 'unprovable' because there is no premise from which it can be deduced.  God seems to be unavailable to our senses, missing from all the scientific discoveries whether on a galactic or molecular scale.  God is sometimes simply considered a human invention, developed in past times to justify what man did not know about the world and about himself, and therefore seems obsolete in our modern age.

This worldview is a mutilation of true reason, because it prevents us from recognising reality as a 'sign' through which God reveals Himself to us and calls us incessantly into a relationship with Him.  Knowledge of God only occurs when there is true freedom which springs from God as the author of all things.  The only limit God has set on his own Omnipotence is our freedom. 

Only by letting ourselves be challenged by the 'sign' of creation can we learn of God's existence.  And only be letting ourselves see the greatest sign of all - the Church which brings the Divine Presence into the world - can we be drawn by Christ into an intimate knowledge of the Father in love and adoration communicating it to those that we meet.

The Lord shows great confidence in us when he asks us to announce this Good News in this difficult epoch.  But we trust in the Lord who, faced with the doubt that still lived in the hearts of His disciples did not hesitate to reassure them, saying " know that I am with you always; yes, to the end of time" (Mt 28:20).

May the Blessed Virgin Mary guide us to welcome more and more the gift of the Holy Spirit.  May we faithfully serve the Son so that, with Mary, our whole life may come one day to sing with the choirs of heaven: Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.  Amen!