But here's the thing. We wouldn't be the people we are today if God hadn't loved us on the very worst day of our lives. Fr. Richard Rohr enlightens us:
"Most of us were taught that God would love us if and when we change. In fact, God loves you so you can change. It is the inherent experience of love that becomes the engine of change."
In the First Letter of John, we read the simplest, most profound words in Scripture: "God is Love." The very Being and innermost Essence of God is Love Itself! We try to understand God being our Supreme Lover by comparing Divine Love to human love (even though humans and God are more dissimilar then similar.)
We human beings know that we don't begin to really live until we begin to really love. We love others by showing people the love inside our hearts, and gifting them with our very selves; we divest ourselves and give ourselves away. Yet somehow even though we give ourselves away, we remain ourselves, finding our greatest fulfillment in love. We become one with the other, yet both of us remain ourselves, give each other space, and even become more of who we are. And loving someone, feeling loved by someone, makes us want to change, to be a better person for our loved one. Love is the most precious and profound Mystery of our lives.
And so God, Who is Love, can't live without loving! God emptied God's Self - divested Him/Herself, - by showing us His beating heart in Jesus, giving Himself as a gift to us in Jesus, giving Himself away to us in Jesus, while still remaining Himself, the Father. And also, "In His mercy, God lets us not only see into his heart; he creates space for us beside his heart and in his heart through the Holy Spirit." (Cardinal Walter Kasper.)
Jesus communicates God's loving mercy to us by choosing the cross, revealing a love for every human being who has lived or will live! "The Second Vatican Council says: in Jesus Christ, God has, in a certain sense, united himself with every human being." (Cardinal Walter Kasper.) St. John tells us that God is Love, and whoever lives in love, lives in God and God in him/her. Think of it! Every human being who understands love or who loves God, and/or family, friends, animals, nature, is the dwelling place of God and also lives in God. Every loving and devout Muslim, Hindu, Jew, Quaker, Evangelical, Catholic, Baptist, Buddhist, atheist, or agnostic, - and more. The wideness of God's Merciful Love covers all and guides all, each according to his/her capacity for love.
In becoming one with God in love, we don't lose ourselves, we actually become more of who we are! God as our Divine Lover accepts us as we are, but when we love someone, love God, we want to grow, and we change. We trust that God continuously loves us, every day and every way, and the Voice of our Divine Lover, like the voices of our human lovers, calls us to stay on the journey of two lives made one - and to move forward.
This life of ours is actually a School for Learning How to Love. That's why we don't look back, we look forward. Students have a fine sense of what they can and cannot do. A kindergarten student doesn't get angry at herself for not being able to read like a fifth grader. A tenth grader struggling with Algebra isn't upset because he doesn't understand Calculus like a twelfth grader. A college student doesn't expect to be able to hold down the job held by a college graduate. So why should we beat ourselves up over our past capacity to love or even our present ability to love? God, Whose very Being is Love, expects us to forgive our past limits and mistakes, live content with our presents, and gaze with hope at our future horizons, when we will love even more fully then we do today.
Why should we have hope? Because we're walking in the footsteps of Jesus. Maybe his footsteps occasionally get blurred in the shifting sands of our fears or desires, or temporarily washed out by the rain of our tears. But the Holy Spirit always leads us back to the unique path where we individually can learn best how to love. If we look back along the way we've come, we see that Jesus was always with us, even on that worst day when we may have felt most alone. We see Jesus walking alongside us now, grabbing our elbow if we stumble. If we look ahead with hope, we can see Jesus gesturing us onward to where he awaits us in our future, with all its new dreams and challenges.
The ancient Israelites would sprinkle dust or ashes on their heads, or sit in ashes, or roll in ashes to physically symbolize their grief, regret, or repentance. Esteemed American poet Carl Sandburg speaks of the futility of living in the past, heaping ashes on our heads, as well as this common hope we have for tomorrow:
"I speak of new cities and new people.
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.
I tell you yesterday is a wind gone down,
a sun dropped in the west.
I tell you there is nothing in the world
only an ocean of tomorrow,
a sky of tomorrows."
- from "Prairie"
On Ash Wednesday, we receive ashes on our foreheads, ashes for grief for our pasts: our sins, regrets, remembrance, and repentance. We realistically assess and repent the ways in which our worst days afflicted ourselves or others. But we hold fast to our best Valentine - the Sacred Heart of our greatest Lover, Who does not want us to destroy ourselves with needless despair and anxiety. If He gives us His whole heart, He gives His whole heart to everyone who lives; if He leads us on the perfect path to love for us, He also leads all of His beloved ones on their perfect paths to an increased capacity for love. Somehow in the Supreme Joy and Life which is Love, He brings all things to the good for all of us, a good, a peace, that can blossom even from the sins and failures of our worst days.
Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity, a Carmelite nun, gives us this beautiful prayer to lead us into deeper intimacy, unity, and peace with our Beloved:
"O my God, O Trinity, whom I adore, help me to completely forget myself and to settle in you, motionless and peaceful, as if my soul already abided in eternity. Nothing should be able to disturb my peace; nothing should call me to fall away from you, O my Immutable (Changeless) One; rather, every minute should lead me further into the depths of your mystery. Grant peace to my soul, make it your heaven, your beloved dwelling, and the place of your repose."