God’s Divine Embrace
At least once a year, we need to venture into the infinitude of God and to explore it rather than shy away from such impossibility. We wonder about this lure of the infinite that makes us feel so very small, so embarrassingly inept and yet so loved by the ultimate, most perfect Being, our Triune God from whom our very existence directly depends.
As our faith grows over time, we were taught, correctly so, that we cannot probe God’s mystery. However, we still want to find out why he loves us despite our insignificance, despite our lack of merit, even despite our repeated disobedience. However, for this to happen while avoiding self-deception we had to wait for him to reveal himself; and he had to reveal himself in a way that would not overwhelm our puny intellect.
The Book of Proverbs (8:22-31) reveals to us how God, in his ageless and infinite wisdom, has decided to lift a corner of the veil of his mystery to make us sharers of his wisdom and satisfy the longing of our hearts while still staying within the boundaries of our human limitations. This is how we learn that, from all eternity, we are dealing with a God who is free to create a splendid universe out of nothingness.
We find a God who desires to interact with his creatures—most of all, with us human beings created in his image and likeness. We find a God establishing many covenants of love and fidelity; a God who wants to be always involved in all aspects of our life. Thus, we discover a God who calls us to life; guides us; corrects us; enlightens us whenever we are enveloped in darkness; and frees us from all that oppresses us and causes us to suffer. And, risking overwhelming our poor minds, he, the one whom the whole universe cannot contain, decided to take on the limits of our human flesh and to be born as a little baby in a stable near Bethlehem.
He did all this so that he could experience, personally, what every human being, from infancy to adulthood, to old age, in strength and in weakness, would feel while standing before God who is the fulness of perfection. He did all this also so that, in his flesh, he could reveal as much as possible the richness of his love and his sovereign majesty without overwhelming, without crushing us.
In our audacious contemplation of the Holy Trinity, we discover also a God who took the risk of creating us free so that we could love him in return with all our strengths, with every fiber of our heart. Slowly, then, as this divine revelation unfolds, we realize that by creating us endowed with freedom, our God grieves whenever we choose to do wrong, yet he stays with us to assist us in breaking loose of any new shackles that our rebellious spirit has put on us.
Eventually, little by little, as it is the case with most of us, amid highs and lows, surges and lulls, impetuses and falls, we discover that he is indeed the One True God, but he is also, at the same time, “bond,” “relationship,” “interaction.” He is One God in three distinct Persons equal in majesty, power and glory. And this realization is simply crucial for us who have been swept up into such a divine “bond.”
We are told that there is always an open offer reserved for us as the “divine elite” that we are: despite our miseries and errors, with docile reliance on grace, we can strengthen the bond with the Holy Trinity and with a contrite heart we can even re-enter into it. According to our situation, we can strengthen or re-establish that bond by experiencing the loving embrace of our most merciful Father. Other times we can strengthen or re-establish that bond with Jesus, our brother, especially whenever our human weaknesses and limits bear heavily on our shoulders. Finally, we can strengthen or reestablish that bond with the Holy Spirit of comfort, support and truth especially whenever we fumble about in darkness and feel unusually weak.
Yes, as divine elite, as his privileged children, we can be always in the embrace of the Triune God. We are meant to be in it as individuals and as a people, as taken individually from the group as well as a community, in the smallness of our humble self and in the greatness of our holy nation, in prosperity and in the throes of failures and frustrations.
Within this Trinitarian embrace from which, thankfully, it is not easy to break loose, as the veil of mystery is lifted, we contemplate the truer reality beyond the reality in which we live. It is the deeper reality in which hope morphs into certainty, and we begin to believe that we are meant for lasting success and assured victory despite everything that pains us and the number of our mistakes that embarrasses us still.
Our dare to probe into the mystery of our Triune God has generated in us the burning desire to enter into that divine embrace and to remain in it forever. In that divine embrace we shall feel hope intensifying with every passing day; it is hope of sharing in the glory that belongs, by right and forever, only to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But it is hope of sharing in that glory based exclusively on the mercy and love of our God, never, to no extent whatsoever, on our presumed, non-existing merits. And what a unique hope it is!
It enables us to boast of our afflictions, frailty, miseries, fears and anything else which had previously caused us to live with more than a touch of shame and with several regrets. It is so because we now know that the Father’s love possesses us completely and permanently. Thus, we can face all the trials of life, all challenges with patient endurance and courage because hope guarantees that endless glory is already ours in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
