Love always wants to share itself.

And God is love.

So God always wants to share himself; therefore he made planets and black holes and galaxy clusters, and he bestowed his very self upon every microscopic atom of the exhaustive creation he had caused to be. What a privilege for us, what a sharing.

Surely this would have been enough.

But the planets and asteroids could not know they were receiving God. And they were unable to love God in return, willingly, for his presence. Their manner of reception was only a relishing of their rough, craggy existence, a way of being exactly what they were or are created to be.

Therefore God made a new beginning. He thought up a miraculously intricate trail by which something called life could come about. He chose a diminutive blue planet circulating insignificantly around a very small star, within what would later—millions of years later—be called the Milky Way.

God caused water. And then he made life to eke its way out of the seas onto shore. Into trees, amoebae, chimps, and even dinosaurs. It chose as its home the highest mountains, the coldest high specks of space, the hottest flaming deserts, and even the oceans’ depths. God loved this abundant “life” like a mother loves her children.

What a delight! God enwrapped them all with love, a love in which they basked. But did not know it.

Did they need to know it?

If you had taken one look at the dinosaurs and apes and fishes and birds, you would have seen that:

this miraculous creation would have been enough.

But still there was room.

God’s overflow of love discovered more space for giving and being received. God scooped out “openness” in various living creatures. These now could receive knowingly the affectionate love God was bestowing upon them, and could give love back to God!

As a result, the human race inched—slowly, cumbrously—into being. Don’t ask me the number of Cro-Magnon species that came about, or how hunting turned into farming and cooking, how weaving and building and fences and fire burst onto the scene. They did.

And God took time to deepen out the spiritual hollow inside these newly fashioned humans in which they could, even in fear and distraction, actually receive God’s Glory—not passively like a rock does the sun, but actively and knowingly, welcoming unto themselves the great gratuity of God’s life, love and presence.

We are those humans. Each of us is able to open in this manner, each of us standing at the apex of such a long history of God's love for us.

Advent is the treasured time to ask quietly, humbly, in what way we love in return.

Do we take time to treasure that opening deep within ourselves? Will we let it thrive? That would mean bringing patience to bear on our nervous, bothersome life, letting God’s presence be enough. It might mean living in a new way. It might mean celebrating at Mass in a new way, a way of patient listening and receiving instead of holding our watches ready so we can time the homily.

And that would be enough, would it not?

Maybe, but what if God’s tender love wanted to make its way out of the church and into the world? Wouldn’t that quite mean the birth of a child named Jesus? We could carry the love God placed in our hearts out to the whole world.

And that
would
indeed
be enough.

You are invited to email a note to the author of this reflection:
Fr. John Foley, SJ