Homily: August 11, 2025 Monday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time (Greatness of God)

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“Think! The heavens, even the highest heavens, belong to the LORD, your God, as well as the earth and everything on it. Yet in his love for your fathers, the LORD was so attached to them as to choose you, their descendants, in preference to all other peoples.”

The greatness of God is truly, completely beyond our full understanding, in fact, it is even beyond our partial understanding. What we know of God is probably just a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the true greatness of God.

The people who lived during the time of Moses had only a minimal understanding of who God is because God had only revealed a little about Himself. Divine revelation is gradual. Even if He had revealed everything about Himself, no one would be able to grasp it all.

First, God revealed Himself to Abraham and his immediate descendants. Then, through Moses, He revealed Himself to an entire community. Finally, in the fullness of time, through His Son Jesus Christ, God revealed Himself to the whole world. If there were human beings living on another planet, God would surely reveal Himself to them too. Because His love is universal.

The only way to truly understand more about God is to love Him and learn to love others in the same way He does.

I realize how very blessed we all are to be born after the Incarnation. We have received the fullness of God’s revelation through Christ, something the previous generations longed to receive but did not live to see.

However, although we have received the full revelation, we are not able to comprehend the full extent of God’s greatness.

So, if you are still struggling to understand God more, try looking up to the highest heavens, consider everything He has created, and ponder the His endless, immense, self-giving love.

Truly, we do not need to know how great God is, we just need to believe how much He loves us. And He loves each of us exactly as we are, unconditionally.

His desire is that we love Him too, because that will give us deep joy. When we experience true deep joy, we will come to know Him a little better. Keep growing in love, and we will grow in understanding, and become more and more full of God.

St. Paul wrote: “That you, rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the holy ones what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:18).

Amen.


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