A Wanting God

The journey of a Christian, the journey of a writer…

What follows is the reflection of a “new” Catholic (me) from early July, 2003 — ten years before I consecrated myself to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and fifteen years before I wrote my book about God in the Flesh. In this reflection, born from a Rosary meditation, you can see the very beginning of my thoughts on the heart of God, carried over from my entry into the Church through the Mystery of the Incarnation. Some theological points may be lacking, but I leave it in the raw…

A Wanting God

            I have been told by those of wisdom, I have been told by the guards of the deposit of faith, that God wants me to love Him.  Yet, I think to myself, How can God want anything?  How can the master and creator of the universe want for anything?  Doesn’t the very word suggest that there is something lacking in God’s existence, in God Godself?  How can this be, when God is absolute and perfect, whole and mighty?  In praying the Rosary one day, an answer came to me, an answer still abiding in my heart.

            I believe in God.  I believe that God is perfect, that only God is perfect.  Therefore, God is complete unto Godself, without anything absent or lacking.  I also believe that God is triune in God’s majesty, that, to my human understanding, God exists as one God, one entity in three divine persons: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.  In contemplating God in this way, the Divine creator and master of the universe is personal, personally involved in creation.  And, I believe that God is desirous of creation.  To think of an absolute and holy other Being, infinite Divinity itself, as wanting anything seems absurd.  But, to think of a father, of father who is complete in himself having nothing taken away or added to his existence by another person, to think of this father as wanting the love of his children — that’s not so hard to understand.  Yet, I resist in contemplating God so anthropomorphically.  That which always was and always will be is not a flesh and blood human being.  However… God the Son is. 

            As a Roman Catholic Christian, I believe that Jesus is God’s Word made flesh, and that this Word existed with God since before creation.  That, indeed God created the universe through God’s Word.  This Word, then, in the fullness of time, becomes embodied in a human being, flesh and blood, whose name is Jesus.  Jesus, both fully human and fully divine, is God; yet Jesus also wants.  He wants as any human being wants from the depths of the heart.  With compassion, mercy, selfless generosity, and True Love, Jesus wants.  He wants me.  He wants you.  He wants humanity.  He wants every human being.  What does he want us to do?  What does he want from us?  Jesus wants Love.  The same Love that he gives.  Just like any human being who is true to his or her humanity. 

            And this, this is why I hear Christians say that Jesus loves me, instead of hearing simply that God loves me.  Both statements are equally true, in fact they can be interchangeable.  But, the emphasis is placed on Jesus, the man Jesus, the Word made flesh, the Son of God, the third divine person of the holy Trinity, because when God takes on humanity in becoming Jesus, God takes in humanity and wants a continuous relationship.  It is emotional and personal, very human, because God Incarnate is human, because God in all the fullness of God’s existence and majesty remains, to this day and forever, human.  God be praised.

            At least, it’s a thought.  A way of understanding…. Maybe, the way.

© 2022 Christina Chase

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Feature Photo by Jonathan Dick, OSFS on Unsplash