Some of you may remember the song from the musical, The King and I, entitled “Getting to Know You.” The song begins with the words: “Getting to know you, getting to know all about you.”
The song celebrates the wonder of getting to know another person through newfound eyes of love. A young man begins to notice nuances of expressions on his beloved’s face, voice tones she uses, things that make her happy and things that upset her. Both of them find joy in the fact that someone is getting to know them as they really are, and discover things about them that they hadn’t even recognized in themselves.
Yet, in spite of the miraculous lenses of love, there is much about the beloved that a person will never find out, even if the two spend their lives together. Such are the limits of human love.
Divine love is something else. One priest said that God is madly in love with each one of us. He knows us from the wrinkles on our face to the deepest hurts of our souls; such is the depths of love he has for us.
Today the Church sings to us a “love Psalm” (139:1-6). It is one of the most beautiful love poems ever written because it tries to describe how madly God is in love with us—the greatest of all love affairs.
“O Lord, you have probed me and you know me; you know when I sit and when I stand; you understand my thoughts from afar.”
We know what happens when a doctor uses a probe to see what’s going on inside our bodies. God’s probe goes so deep and is so powerful that it sees all the way to the depth of our spirits. His attention to us is so focused that he knows even the position of our bodies at any given time—sitting, standing, kneeling, jogging, lying down. He doesn’t miss a thing. He even understands what we’re thinking about even when we don’t.
“Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know the whole of it. Behind me and before me, you hem me in and rest your hand upon me.”
Amazing! Do we realize that right now as we read these words, our loving God is literally behind us and in front of us, surrounding us with his presence? His hand rests gently on our heads as an expression of love and protection. And when we are getting ready to speak, he already knows what we’re going to say, how we’re going to say it, and what is prompting us to speak. No one has the power to be more absorbed in us that God has.
It is hard for us to imagine that the great God who rules over all of creation, who places stars in the sky, and directs the channels of seas, has the ability and the interest to be attentive to one, insignificant human being. How could such an almighty God bend over and focus his eyes of love on me twenty-four hours a day? We can’t fathom this because we’ve tasted only the fleeting touches of human love.
Remember at the Last Supper when Jesus gave his disciples a new command and a new power. He told them to “love one another as I have loved you.” Jesus loves us with the “Psalm 139” type love. By an act of grace he has empowered us to love one another with the same love God has for us. We have been given the capacity to go far beyond the limits of human love, and love as Jesus loved. When we are baptized, we are grafted onto the Vine himself, and the life of the Vine begin to flow through us, his branches. Divine love begins to pulsate inside us and gives us eyes to see in the same God does. We can see, for example, beyond the unattractive features of a homeless man sitting in the gutter, into the depths of his hidden child made into God’s own image and loved by God’s “Psalm 139” kind of love.
“God so loved the world that he sent his only Son…” He sent Jesus, not only so God could get to know us even better, but so that we, also, can get to know him as he really is. His mad love goes so overboard that he allows us frail humans, to see Jesus, touch Jesus, and even receive him as food into our bodies.
When we take time for prayer today, let’s read these inspired words slowly and repeatedly, until the reality that they express begins to consume us.
“Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; too lofty for me to attain” (Ps 139:6).
