Loving God

“A man may claim he loves his wife. His wife will want to see the evidence. In like manner, we can talk about God all we please, but God will not be fooled. Jesus told the story of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31-46) for a reason. Saying we’re Catholic does not mean we are, except in the thinnest sense. Relationships have consequences in actions. Otherwise, they’re just empty words. Our relationship with God is no exception. When Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me?” and Peter answers yes, it’s no surprise that Jesus immediately follows up with: “Then feed my sheep” (John 21:17). God loves us always. We can choose to ignore that. All of the damned do. But if we claim to love him, it’s an “if/then” kind of deal, with obligations of conduct and personal honesty just like any good marriage or friendship.

The twist in loving God is that it’s not a standard “I, Thou” affair. It turns out to be an “I, Thou—and everybody else” kind of arrangement. Christian faith is not just vertical. It’s also horizontal. Since God created all human persons and guarantees their dignity by his Fatherhood, we have family duties to one another. That applies especially within the ekklesia—the community of believers we call the church—but it extends to the whole world. This means our faith has social as well as personal implications. And those social implications include the civil dimension of our shared life; in other words, the content of our politics.”

-Archbishop Charles J. Chaput,  Render Unto Caesar

God Is Known By His Works

"Concerning the question: What is God? not one of the masters who have ever been has succeeded in giving an explanation, for it is beyond all thought and intelligence. And yet someone who zealously and diligently seeks for some kind of knowledge of God will attain it, although in a very remote way... This is how some virtuous pagan masters sought him in former times, especially the wise man, Aristotle. He examined the course of nature..., sought passionately and thus found. From nature he deduced that that there must necessarily be a unique monarch, lord over all creatures, and this is what we call God...God's being is such a spiritual substance that mortal eye is unable to contemplate it as it is, but it can be seen in its works. As Saint Paul says: creatures are a mirror reflecting God (Rom 1:20). Let us stop here for a moment...: look above and around you, how immense and lofty is the heaven in its swift course, with what nobility has its Lord adorned it with its seven planets and how decorative it is by reason of its innumerable host of stars! When the sun shines gaily in a cloudless sky during the summer, what fruit, what good things it brings to the earth! How beautifully green are the meadows, how smiling the flowers, how the sweet song of little birds resounds in forest and field, and all the animals that went into hiding during the hard winter now hasten happily outside. How both young and old among men express their joy with the joy that brings such happiness to them. O loving God, if you are so worthy of being loved in your creatures, how beautiful and worthy of being loved you must be in yourself!"

-Blessed Henry Suso, Dominican Life, ch. 50

Can God Make A Rock So Big That He Can't Lift It?

"1. Concerning God's omnipotence, the following must be held according to the sacred teaching. God is almighty, but in such a manner that acts of culpability, for instance, lying, or intending evil, cannot be attributed to Him; nor can acts of penalty [for original sin], such as fearing and sorrowing; nor corporeal and material acts, such as sleeping and walking, except figuratively; nor contradictory acts, such as making something greater than Himself, or producing another God equal to Himself, or creating some being that would be infinite in act; and so forth. As Anselm writes, "whatever is contradictory, be it the smallest thing, is not found in God." Although God cannot do such things, yet He is truly, properly, and perfectly omnipotent.

2. This should be understood as follows. The first Principle is powerful by a power that is unqualified; therefore the universal "omni" prefacing "potent" covers all those things the power to do which is power unqualified: that is, all things that proceed from a power both complete and orderly. We call COMPLETE a power that cannot disappear, succumb, or be limited. But sin implies a disappearance of power, pain a collapse of power, and bodily operation a limitation of power. Divine power, supreme and utterly perfect, is not created, nor is it dependent upon anything, nor is it wanting in anything. Therefore, it cannot be the subject of culpable, penal, or corporeal acts: and this precisely because it is omnipotent through a power that is complete.

3. Now, there are three senses in which a power can be called ORDERLY: as it is in act; as it signifies potency on the part of a creature; and as it signifies potency on the part of the uncreated Might alone. That which is possible to power in the first sense is not only possible but actual. That which is possible in the second sense but not in the first is simply possible, although not actual. That which is possible in the third sense, but not in the first or second, is possible to God but impossible to creatures. That which is not possible in any of the foregoing senses, i. e., whatever, by reason of primordial and eternal principles and causes, is directly opposed to order, is simply impossible; as it would be for God to produce something infinite in act, to make something to be and not to be at the same time, to make a past event as never having happened, and so forth. The order and completeness of divine might exclude the possibility of doing such things.

This clearly shows the scope of divine might, the meaning of the simply possible and of the simply impossible, and the fact that some impossibility is compatible with true omnipotence."

-St. Bonaventure, Breviloquium, Chapter 7- On God's Omnipotence

(Or you could go with the short answer, which is: No.)