All for One

By show of hands, how many of us had a "Catholic" childhood? Chances are at some point we were told "Jesus died for you." For many of us, this was one of those cliche things that (for the most part) went in one ear and out the other, like "Peace be with you." But, when we start to think of it a bit closer, it can become quite unnerving.

It can be easy to "rationalize away" the implications of this by saying, "Well, Jesus died for all of us!" While this is true, it's not doing justice to a vital truth - Jesus died for you. You, specifically. Yes, you. This isn't "Catholic guilt" coming into play...it's one of the most beautiful truths of creation: God loves you.

Let's start back at creation - God literally made everything out of nothing and, each time declared "It was good". But the fact of our creation is so taken for granted we rarely stop to consider what we are. Why are we who we are? Why is humanity the way it is? Because God made us. He could have literally made anything, but he formed us as we are. He formed you as you are. God could have made you look like anything, but he chose you.

If God is love, and we are made in God's image, we are made in the image of love. Therefore, all creation is full of God's perfect love. Every atom is where it is because God said "It was good". And, there's no one else like you.

My generation is among the first to grow up with the "self-esteem childhood" - a society that raised every child to think they were perfect. Think of the schools that abolished failing grades, because they made the children feel bad. When I say we are unique, I do not mean flawless. But perhaps it is those faults that make us unique. We are a collectors item, hand made. Even if we are an identical twin, we are still unique. Ernesto Cardenal put it wonderfully when he said, "No two leaves are alike, no two fingerprints are alike, even less are any two souls alike. The soul that is lost, God does not reproduce for all eternity, and he feels the loss forever."

So what does that mean for us? It means that even if we think we are "screwed up", God makes no mistakes. Yes, we are flawed. But we are also tasked with orienting those flaws more perfectly toward God. God's love is so infinite, he pours it on us as though we were the only two beings in the universe. Just as St. Augustine said "Our souls are restless until the rest in you", God is restless until we "come home".

Think of that - God, the infinite creator who is, who was and who is to come...loves you. He doesn't need your love to survive. But even before the universe was created, God lowered himself. He restrained himself to desire our love. This isn't the only time God lowered himself for us. We always strive to better ourselves - to "lift up our hearts to the Lord" - but even when we do our best we are still human. We can only reach so high. God sees us trying to reach him, like a child reaching for his mother's arms, and like that mother bends down to carry us.

Even if you were the only person to ever live, God would have still sent his Son to die for you. We know Jesus is God, so we know that when he was on the cross, he was thinking of you. You, specifically.

Just as we hunger for God, God hungers for us all the same. God longs for us like a lover longs for his beloved, and he waits for the day we finally return. In the meantime, we should try to do the same. We should try to long for God. Pursue God. Chase God wherever he takes you. That's God's love for you. A river. Not a trickling stream, but a raging tide that will surge through anything until it reaches you.

Embrace that love today.