Gerald Archibald, Edmonton, AB

I hear and read all the time that God loves us! I hear and read all the time that Jesus loves us! I know cognitively that this is true. But I have great difficulty believing this with my total being, with my heart and emotions.

Oh sure, there are moments in my life that I get a glimpse of Divine love for me (these moments are wonderful, but few and far between). I feel if I truly knew of this divine love, I would see the world differently, be very positive, handle suffering much better, accepting others with their faults, be more forgiving and so on.

I would sort of have a new lens to view all things and people anew. So, I keep reading meditations on the love of God towards us, I pray for a better understanding and for a deeper understanding of this at all levels of my being.

I know others have this limited understanding of God’s love for us. Am I wrong when I suspect many people also “suffer” from this limited belief in God’s love?

Why is this so? In my own case I attribute a good part of my present limitations in believing totally in the love of God to my upbringing. We were taught to obey the commandments, or we would sin and need to go to confession. Many of us believed God to be a judge of us throughout our lives, at the time of our death, and at the end of time.

Hell and purgatory were not far from our minds, at least subconsciously. Vatican II in the 1960s was a complete reversal regarding what the emphasis of our faith should be. It was during the early years of reading and studying some of the writings that emerged from the Council, I began to understand the love of God in a more complete way. But I desired more.

The parishes I attended soon after Vatican II adopted many of the changes recommended by the Council. We had folk masses where the churches were full; we often had home visits with Mass celebrated with family and friends; lay led liturgies when the priest was unavailable; homilies that were generally wonderful giving insights into our faith and how we could express it in our daily lives.

Music was so inspiring. But in the mid-1970s onwards to today, the bishops clamped down on many of these practices. As a result, we often have liturgies, music, and homilies that are not very inspiring if at all.

My wife and I attended Easter mass that was beyond uninspiring. Few responded to the prayers offered at Mass. The music was unfamiliar, so no one was singing. The homily was not about the gifts of the Resurrection and how Christ’s rising unleashed the Holy Spirit to infuse all of us.

There seemed to be no joy from the celebrant and the people present in saying this (I recognize there are devoted caring priests out there who are doing their very best to bring the liturgy to life and the love of the Lord to their parishioners),

I recently read several daily meditations offered by Father Richard Rohr (The Centre of Contemplation and Action).
Honestly, some of these meditations are so impactful and meaningful, I think about them often throughout the day (and perhaps much longer). In a recent meditation, he referred to writings by Matthew Fox, a renowned theologian where he talks about the Resurrection. It was called “Be Resurrection” (April 13, 2023).

He starts out with quoting Jesus as recorded by John: “I have come that you may have life, life in abundance.” He goes on to express this profound message: The Resurrection poured out Christ’s resurrected life and His unbounded love for each of us. We actually become part of Christ’s resurrection and share in his divine love. His love is within us. As John says, “God is love, and he who abides in love, abides in God and God in him.” So, God loves each and every one of us unconditionally, just as we are. Can we now internalize this amazing Spirit given to each of us?

Fox continues and says, we are in fact resurrected Christs. We have the spark of divine love within us. In fact, he says the Resurrected Spirit is Life itself. If we are alive and breathe in life around us, we are breathing in the Spirit of Christ. Fox continues:

“Many mystics … say ‘God is life.’ Thus, to say, ‘I am fully alive and fully in love with life which means I am feeling fully the God presence in me – I am in love with God who is Life, the living God. And to say ‘I am the Life’ is to say ‘I am God’ or at least a part of God, a son or daughter of God, an expression, an offspring, a manifestation, and incarnation of God. Another Christ.”

In Richard Rohr’s meditation of March 31st, 2023, he describes an unbelievable experience of James Finlay, one of the teachers in the Centre of Contemplation and Action. This experience described by Finlay affected me deeply. It’s the telling of how Finlay was abused by both his father during childhood, and later by a priest he trusted, and how he brought his powerlessness to Jesus:

“In some strange way I could not understand, it seemed that just as my passivity traumatically bonded me to my father, so too, my passivity traumatically bonded me to the priest.

“It was in the midst of this road to nowhere that I began to sense that God was inviting me to give up trying to overcome my fear and instead bring my feelings of fear and shame to Jesus.

“The felt need to pray in this way led me to imagine, as in a kind of waking dream, that I was alone on a moonlit night in the garden where the Gospels tell us Jesus would go to spend whole nights in prayer. In my minds eye I could see and feel myself searching here and there, looking for Jesus so that I might share with him how powerless I was to be true to who I sensed he was calling me to be…

“Then suddenly, looking this way and that, I saw Jesus sitting alone in the moonlight at the edge of a clearing. I walked across the clearing and knelt at his feet. I could feel his hand on my shoulder as I leaned close to whisper in his ear, revealing the burdens of my shame-based weakness and fear.

“Having poured out all that my wounded and hurting heart was able to say, Jesus drew me in close and whispered in my ear three words that set me free, words that still echo inside me to this day. I heard him whisper ‘I love you’.

“Dazed and amazed in being so unexplainably loved, the spirit within me let me hear what Jesus and I were waiting to hear me say. So I leaned close and whispered my secret ‘I love you’ to Jesus. And there in that instant there was the realization between us that the matter was settled once and for all. The matter being that the good news of God’s love for us is never measured by our ability to be true to who we know in our heart God is calling us to be. For the sole measure of God’s love for us is the measureless expanse of God’s merciful love, permeating us and taking us to itself in the midst of our faltering and wayward ways.”

(I welcome your feedback- archibaldjerry@gmail.com)