God yearns for you

Monday, February 06, 2017

One of the gifts God has given to us is the gift of free will. Without it, we would be programmed robots with no choice but to love and obey the Lord in all things.

Sometimes, free will might seem to be not a gift, but a burden. Our lives are a struggle to attain that unity with God that would exist if we did not have free will. However, because we have free will, we are free to depart from God and even to give ourselves over to the realm of darkness. But yet, even to those who are most lost, God continually waits for the time when they might come back to him, like the prodigal father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. While the son was approaching his father’s house, the father was already waiting at the gate for his return.

One of the most poignant statements about this patience and yearning of the Lord is something I read by Olivier Clément in the book I have been writing about lately:

God remains in history the beggar who waits at each person’s gate with infinite patience, begging for love. (p. 56)

And Origen (185-254) states in his commentary on the Psalms that “Christ will be in agony to the very end of the world; he will suffer until all humanity has entered the Kingdom.”

You might discern from this statement that Origen believed in “universal salvation;” that is, that ultimately all souls will return to God and find salvation. It is important to note, however, that the Church condemned this teaching of his time and emphatically does not teach “universal salvation” as a doctrine. In our own time, students and teachers of the mystical tradition are once again expressing a strong hope and desire and prayer for universal salvation, and this has surfaced especially during the recent Jubilee Year of Mercy.

Many people, however, are much better at hoping for condemnation that for salvation. I was distressed today to read on-line that a man who was imprisoned for beating his infant son to death was finally brutally murdered by his roommate. There were many comments to this story, all of which applauded the murder of the child-killer. Our own emotional response to the original crime might also lead us to feel the same way—and yet, however, God is the ultimate judge, not any of us, and based on my own studies and prayer and writings, I would tend to say that a Christian needs to refrain from rushing to judgment no matter what the situation, and that over the past several decades the Church has moved to a stronger stance against capital punishment.

Finally, consider this passage from 1 Corinthians 15:

for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. (1 Co 15: 22-25)