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So for Aquinas, I'm going to give you a Latin phrase here, then I'm going to translate it.

Aquinas says that God is Ipsum essay subsistence, which is to say that God is being itself. God is existence itself.

God's essence is existence. I can't tell you how important this understanding of God is for your

own faith and for moving forward and thinking about the mysteries of God and the mysteries of

revelation. It's very common and tempting to mysteries of God and the mysteries of revelation.

It's very common and tempting to think of God as supreme being, as the supreme being,

that there's a latter, you know, atoms, molecules, insects, plants, animals,

us, and angels, and they're God on the top, right? That's very common. That's how most people think of it.

That is definitively not the correct way to think about God. For St. Thomas, God is not at the top of the ladder. He is the latter.

It's the better way to think about that. He is the very act of existed.

Even the English word being, I hope we have any English majors here, is a gerent.

It's an I-N-G word, right?

Which means it's a verbal noun that indicates an activity, like running, walking. The word being is the very act of

existence. So think of God as the very act of existence. He is the very act of existence itself.

So being is not a noun in this sense, it's a verb.

So a bit analogy, and St. Thomas uses this analogy in many ways, is the act of heating.

Fire is engaged in the act of heating.

Everything else that exist exist because it is participating in God's existence.

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