Saint Paul asks us today one of the most important questions we can contemplate – what will separate us from the love of Christ? Is it persecution, or perhaps plague (or pandemic), or peril, or war? Or is it simply our own lack of understanding, and the willingness to believe? We have a difficult time processing God, and who He really is, and what He is capable of – and longs to do for us. We seem to put up our own barriers and limit our perception of His power. To be sure, this is in part due to our fallen nature. We still have the remnants of that sin, that I think makes it very difficult for us to endure someone so loving and brilliantly illuminated. We don’t seem to be able to take Him in without effort. It’s like a small child trying to comprehend an adult conversation, as much as they would like to be able to know what is being spoken of, they find it hard to take in, and it leads to frustration and eventually perhaps a giving up of their efforts. I think that we experience this sometimes when we try to take in our Lord for who He really is.
When Jesus came to us in human form, to show us a level of intimacy that had never before been experienced between us and our Lord, except perhaps in the days in the garden before the fall, we didn’t know how to handle that either. Even though He came to us in the humblest of forms, in an effort to try to teach us at a level that we could better grasp, we still couldn’t handle it. His message was absolute truth, and the illumination of that truth was more than many could allow continuing, because of the darkness within. Our Lord came to us to teach, to heal, and to feed us. He did so many times when providing sustenance for those who came to hear His word. He multiplied the loaves and the fish because He knew our needs – all of them. He healed our infirmities because He knew the suffering that was being endured, and He holds for us a love and compassion that is beyond our ability to fully comprehend. He gave us his very flesh and blood as our spiritual food to allow us to have life within us, by His own sacrifice. This seemingly humble form, who came to us as the suffering servant, is absolutely the same God who created the very fabric of space, time, and matter that surrounds us and is our physical reality – our universe. He could have done all that desired to accomplish without so much as the blink of an eye, and never suffered, never come to us in such a humble form and endure all the banality of our day to day existence. Yet He chose to do this because He loves us so much, and wants our love in return – true love, not influenced or manipulated, but the love that can only come from the free choice to do so. Our God, who is so powerful we can scarcely begin to comprehend His nature, is also a God so full of love for us that He would rather endure and suffer than lose the opportunity to have us love Him in return. He would rather patiently wait for us to learn His lessons, and then willingly seek Him, than to shape our love and emotions on his own. He is truly a father in the deepest sense of the word.
Our struggle will always be to try to comprehend such a love. We will have doubts of our own fabrication, and we will struggle with what I call the “it’s too good to be true” syndrome. Yet the reality is this: that He is that loving, that powerful, that truthful, and that enamored of us, that He will always be there for us, no matter the rejections, the ignoring, or the indifference that we show at times. He will care for us, and guide us, and be ready to welcome us in His embrace. We need to simply return that love, and all of this can be ours – believe it. We do not hold all the answers – I would think that is pretty plain, especially in times like these. Why would we think that we are capable of defining God in order to make ourselves comfortable enough to accept Him? If we were able to do so, He would hardly be the awesome God that He is. We must instead be willing to accept Him on His terms, make the leap, and let Him show us what our relationship can truly be. He has NEVER done anything to deserve anything less than our trust and our love, and He never will. We have nothing to be afraid of, and we have everything to gain. Feel His embrace, know His peace, and walk about with the true freedom that can only come from Him.
The Deacons Bench 