There is an amazing love story between ourselves and God. God wants to be intimately among us. He created us out of pure love in order to become His creation. God’s heart beats in our hearts. We need to recognise the great dream God has and begin to live in a way that mirrors His image. You and I are growing into God every day.
We are a rough draft of the shape of God. God is at work in our innermost being. We look for our God waiting to be discovered in our deepest selves. God needs us to co–create with Him. God and ourselves are inseparable. Meister Eckhart tells us: “You are God’s seed. As the pear seed grows into the pear tree and the hazel seed becomes the hazel tree, so does God’s seed become God”.
The purpose of our lives is that our God – likeness might become complete. We are God’s dream coming true. We are God’s delight. God rejoices in us. He is the energy behind every heartbeat of our lives. God has taken up residence in our hearts. No one is outside the reach of God. We are held in His embrace always. We give glory and praise to Him through our lives. God’s gracious gift of Himself surrounds us all the time. Karl Rahner reminds us that God is born in us “when someone experiences laughter or tears, bears responsibility, stands by the truth, breaks through egoism in his\her life, when someone hopes against hope, faces the shallowness of the daily bustle with patience, when someone learns to be silent and in this inner silence lets the sin in his\her heart die, there is an event of grace”. There God is born.
We are graced from the moment of our creation. Divine power energises our lives every day. We are called to nourish the mystic already alive and well in each of us as we search for the hidden love and meaning, for the experience of the abiding mystery of God in the ordinary things that happen to us every day.
The beauty, joy and goodness of our experiences are revelations of God. Witness a majestic sunset. Celebrate with a friend. Be overcome with the immensity of the ocean. Be unconditionally loved. Wonder at the stars. Delight in love and beauty. All are experiences of God. Thomas Aquinas reminds us: “in all creatures there is a footprint of God”. All things are produced by the Divine Art and so are God’s work of art. God is beauty and is beautifying all things with a holy beauty. We reflect that beauty. The Divine Office of the Church reminds us : “O Godhead, here untouched, unseen, all things created bear Your trace, the seed of glory sown in you, will flower when we see Your face”.
Be comfortable with yourself. Accept yourself. Celebrate yourself. You are God’s dream. Once we surrender to the extravagant love of God we will shine with a holy brightness and vigour and vision. We are born with a sense of what is good for us, an innate feeling for truth and beauty, for justice and wisdom. We lean towards health and wholeness. We have only to go on an inner journey to search for it. Our seeds of God may be asleep. We can awaken them through prayer and stillness. There will always be something that calls us home to God. We will always be asking, “is that all there is to life”. We have come from God and we belong in God.
Our body-spirit and the God-Spirit are made for each other. God hides in the human heart. We are the gateway to the divine. We are God’s intimate friend. Exodus reminds us: “I will make all my beauty pass before you and in your presence I will pronounce my name”. We let God be God in us by recognizing our divinity. Everything, everyone and all creation is a lovely, touching incarnation of Divine Love.
We don’t have to travel far because we are on holy ground. God’s love is a forgiving, merciful and compassionate love. We are accepted without conditions. Here are the waters of inspiration and healing. God will support us, enrapture us and bring us to a joy we have never known. A lived trust in God’s love and in our capacity to become divine love, is the sun and soil of our spiritual growth. He is our life breath. He delights in us . To be well and whole is the gift of God’s grace. Our lives can be driven by a great restlessness until we accept the fact that we have to stop running sometime. Then we come face to face with the reality of who we are. “Come to terms with God to be at peace. In this shall good come to you. Receive instruction from His mouth, and lay up His words in your heart. If you return to God, you will be restored. Then you will lift up your face to Him and upon your ways the light shall shine”. Job 22 : 22ff. God delights in you.
Sr. Ann Crowley, Mercy Convent, Kilkee
Clare Champion Article 22nd of October 2021