Some thoughts about God and the mystery of Redemption
Holy God, we do not grasp how awesome and incomprehensible are Your truths. We mistake our conceptions regarding You as the essence of the reality that they fail to encapsulate. Human Reason cannot make sense of God becoming subject to obedience, humility, selflessness and suffering, in love for His creatures! Thus, while we seek You, we are required to trust as little children.
We can only suspect a flicker of the magnitude of this God through His Creation of a stunningly vast universe containing massive expanding galaxies in an immensity of space. Yet, God of such greatness, You also create the fragile intricacy of tiny insects and the worlds of microscopic lifeforms in their intrinsic perfection! Holy God, open our minds and hearts to the supreme greatness and the sublime mystery of Your works!
From our tiny planet, so important to us but insignificant amongst the countless orbits of the universe, we dare to say ‘our God’ and ‘our Father’ in contemplating the Creator of all these marvels and capable of unknown wonders inconceivable to us. Perhaps the greatest wonder, however, is the love and mercy You show to Your human creatures on this planet, Earth!
All things are held in being in continuous creation within You. Yet, to our knowledge, only human creatures dare to sin. You require of us a life of charity and justice, of prayer and self-denial, of trust and faithfulness during our earthly existence—in promise of everlasting union with the everlasting I AM WHO AM, which is Yourself. Slow to trust, we are reluctant to accept sacred Your dream and plan for us as individuals and as community. The choice to reject or accept is ours.
The Angels, whom You created before us, also faced a choice to love and honour God or to serve themselves. Two-thirds obeyed God and now dwell with You in glory and delight. To the rebellious remainder, punishment was swift. Doubtless, You gave these glorious creatures generous opportunity to fulfil their radiant destiny!
Yet many people habitually accept Your revelations and promises with spasmodic attention or with vague complacency. Before so great a God, the purest human zeal and the highest knowledge and goodness are as nothing. How intense should be our gratitude before the wonder of our relation to You. How great our repentance should be before the arrogance of neglecting our Creator’s laws and astonishing mercy! Holy God please lead us through awareness, repentance and rebirth into continuing spontaneity of response to Your creative love!
So that we in our unworthiness may be saved and made whole, through Your mercy the seeming-impossible occurs. The eternal Son of God enters the limitations of created time and matter. He assumes fully our humanity, while also retaining His infinite divinity. With His humble, obedient life as human being, He bridges the immeasurably vast difference between God and creature for all humankind!..
In our disobedience and ingratitude, our God, You have not destroyed us, but have become for us—a defenceless infant…a humble labourer…a man murdered by Your chosen people. You have become for all time, food to be assimilated into the functions of the human body and soul of mere creatures, devout and lukewarm alike. You have become bread to be tabernacled in centuries of neglect before multitudes of unbelievers and of apathetic followers…cherished only by Your true friends. Yet even these have not lived without offence against You, excepting one pure woman, chosen as Mother—for the Son did not enter our nature in resplendence as a magnificent adult. Rather, the Father humbly, through an Angel, sought permission of the sinless young virgin to accept Him as a helpless embryo!
What is this humility, this faith, this patience, this obedience, this compassion that You show us, infinite God! We are proud, stubborn, untrusting and wayward, yet Your mercy remains open to endless human insult, for within time it is always subject to our personal acceptance or rejection. Repeatedly, You reiterate Your love and mercy in our hearts and through other persons. You reiterate them through Scripture and ministry of the Church, source of grace, sacrament and wisdom established by the Son to fulfil His promise to remain always with us.
Our God, who are You who so loves His ungrateful, ignorant, unworthy creatures! Behold the humility of eternal, infinite God, to love and desire us who are enmeshed in egoism that alienates us from each other and You! We begin to suspect the smallness of our vision, the confusion of our understanding, and the flawed nature of our enthroned Reason, with its inability to cope with these unfathomable, paradoxical truths.
