God's Plan for Man's Salvation (cont.)

Since I can't come up with my next installment on "The Ways of God" for fathers, I will continue transcribing the next few paragraphs from my Dad's talk on "God's Plan for Man's Salvation:

From bits and pieces, one could come to the conclusion that it (the Church-ed) is unscientific, or unreasonable in its demands, irrational in its beliefs, or too rational (too good to be true), too militant-only men as priests, too soft-the many women who are religious, too humble-Christ's humility and that of the martyrs, to proud (pomp and ceremony), etc. But it is none of these. For example, the Church can't clash with science because God made the world, and the men of science can only find what god made; it can't clash (i.e. the Church and science-ed). The conclusions they draw may be different from the truth, but it is because they only see bits and pieces.

What I hope to do is to review, without much explanation, and without proof, God's plan for man.

God, perfect, infinite and limitless, created things in various orders of being. God, being God, is not a creature, was never created, but exists for all time, with no time dimension.

His highest order of creation is the angels, purely spiritual beings. The lowest order of being are the inorganic material things: non-life, stones, water, etc. The next highest order is life, not sensual life: plants, trees, flowers, etc. The next higher order are sensual beings: animals, fish, birds, etc. The next highest order are rational beings-men.

Each higher order of being possesses more perfect activity. All of the creatures mentioned fulfill necessarily their destinies without choice, except man.

Only man has both material body and immortal soul. He has intellect and will: intelligence or the ability to know God, and will or the ability to choose God and/or other things. His intellect is always seeking truth in one form or another. His will is always seeking good in one form or another. He seeks all truth and all good for(?) an infinite end. these things can never be completely satisfied in the world no matter how much he knows or how many things he chooses.

In essence, it is God's plan that these two desires be completely fulfilled in the next world, when they contemplate god, who is or contains all truth and all good. then will man's soul be completely happy. The measure of happiness obtainable by any soul will be determined by man's life on earth. All souls in heaven will be completely happy, but some will be capable of more happiness than others.

Our Lady of Joyful Hope-pray for us! ... Oremus pro invicem!