The Divine Lamp

Whether God is present in all things? (See ST. Ia, 8, 1)God is present in all things, not as part of their essence, or as an accident, but as the agent is present in what he does, for an agent must be united with, and by his ppower be joined to, what he does; and hence God, as Universal Cause, is present to all things, not only when they begin to be, but as long as they exist. As light, which is caused in the air by the sun, remains so long as the air is illuminated, so God exists perpetually in all things as their Creator.

Whether God is everywhere? (See ST Ia. 8, 2)God is said to be in every place by His Power, not as a body fills place, excluding every other by the fact of its being there, for, rather, God may be said to fill place, inasmuch as He gives to all things in place that which makes them to be in place. Thus God is present effectively in all created things, but objectively in the rational creature which knows and loves Him by act or habit; in such a manner is God present by grace in the saints.

Whether God is everywhere by essence, presence, and power? (See ST. Ia. 8, 3)Thus, therefore, He is present in all things by power, inasmuch as all things are subject to Him; and He is in all things by His Presence, as all things are bare and open to His eyes; and He is in all things by His Essence, inasmuch as He is in all as the Cause of Being. Moreover, (ST. Ia. 8, 4) that is properly said to be everywhere which is necessarily present in any given place, which is proper to God; for however many places there might be, from their very existence it would follow that God must be in them all, for nothing can exist but by Him. Thus it belongs to God to be everywhere first and of Himself; and it belongs to Him alone that, however many places there might be, in each of them He must be present, not by division of parts, but wholly as He is in Himself.

From A COMPANION TO THE SUMMA by Walter Farrell:

Infinity

No limits are to be placed on the goodness of God, as no limits are to be assigned to any other divine attribute. How can you have a fence with nothing, absolutely nothing, on the other side of it? What is there of reality, that God will not have, to mark the spot where the fence must begin? Limitation is essentially a declaration of potentialities achieved or potentialities capable of achievement; without potentiality limitation is a contradiction in terms. And there can be no potentiality in God, for potentiality is a declaration of dependence. God has not received existence within the limits of a human, an animal or an angelic nature; He has not received at all, He is. The idea of reception is the idea of change, of potentiality actualized, of perfection within limits–something that our proof for His existence forced us to exclude from God. He is infinite, and He alone; for He alone is first, receiving from no one, giving to all.

Ubiquity

In a very real sense, this utterly limitless God overflows the limits of the universe. He is everywhere within it, yet not contained by it. Everything in the universe comes from God; existence is His proper effect. Where anything exists,\ there is God. Understand, now, this is not merely a matter of God first giving existence and then abandoning the universe to its fate; He does not give us a pat on the back as we leave the corner of nothingness to jump into the ring of life, leaving us to take the blows while He shouts advice that takes none of the sting out of the blows. Existence belongs to God; as long as existence endures, there is the hand of God sustaining it as a mother supports her infant or the throat of a singer sustains his song. God is everywhere, and only God; for only God is the infinite, the first cause explaining every existent thing.

The ubiquity of God, in common with all the divine perfections, is not a cold, abstract thing meaningless to men. Its significance for human living is inexhaustible. In thc concrete, it means, for instance, that God is in the surge of the sea, the quiet peace of hills and valleys, the cool refreshment of rain, the hard drive of wind-driven snow. In the cities He is in the bustling of crowds, the roar of traffic, the struggle for pleasure, for life, for happiness, in the majesty of towering buildings. In homes He is not to be excluded from the tired, drowsy hours of night, the hurried activity of morning, from the love and quarrels, the secret worries and unquestioning devotion, the sacrifice and peace that saturate a home. In every individual one of us God is more intimately present than we are to ourselves. Every existing thing within us demands not only the existence of God but also His constant presence, from every rush of blood from our hearts to every wish, every thought, every act. In other words, everything that is real must have God there as the explanation, the foundation, the cause of every moment of its reality.

Thomas puts this all succinctly and beautifully when he says that God is in the world, in everything and everyone in the world, by His essence, causing all things, by His presence, all things being naked and open to the eye of this intelligent cause, by His power on which everything depends, to which everything is subject.

There is in this conception a majesty that transforms the earth. The mistaken exaggerations of Eastern philosophy made men walk carefully lest, treading on a living thing, they tread on the soul of a man. We have no fear of treading on the soul of man nor on God; but we do live in a world vibrant with divinity. We can give a real reverence to every being because within it, supporting its very existence, is the living God Himself. There is terror in this conception, the terror of moving in an atmosphere pervaded with divinity, of being ourselves wrapped about with divinity, penetrated with the infinite. But there is also courage and comfort here to be had from no other source. We bar the world in general from everything but the surface of our lives; friends are allowed to enter a few rooms of our palace; love throws open the gates as far as it is given us to open them–as wide as physical signs or clumsy, stumbling, inadequate words can open our souls, as wide as sacrifice and devotion can keep those gates open. Only God can walk freely about the innermost corridors of our being. And He does. Unless He be there, we could not be.

The pessimistic pantheism of the East, to which our modern philosophy edges closer every day, distorted the truth of the intimate presence of God to the point of identifying everything with divinity. On such premises there was good grounds for pessimism. All distortions are false, this one is as absurdly false as the identification of my image in a mirror with myself or the inability to see any difference between the poet and his poem. None of the things created by God are divine; rather they are the mirrors of divinity, the effects of the divine cause that depend every instant on that cause for their reality