God went mad out of love for us

I’ve been reading a lot these days (admittedly, this is not new behaviour).

I just finished an excellent biography of Flannery O’Connor (Flannery by Brad Gooch) and I’m partway through Ignatius of Loyola: The Psychology of a Saint by W.W. Meissner, SJ. It’s a weighty book, both physically and mentally, but very interesting. On my subway journeys, however, I am reading Seek God Everywhere: Reflections on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius by Anthony de Mello, SJ. (Can you sense my current Ignatian theme?) Anyway, this morning I became totally engrossed in it (so engrossed, in fact, that I missed my subway stop and had to loop around back – whoops!). This passage had me caught up:

At the root of pure creation there is an act of infinite love. God falls for us; this is the unbelievable news. That means he would lose himself for us. This is too shocking that God would be a victim of the passion that we call love. Then we are told the shocking thing that God loves us so much that he gave up his goodness for our sake! Hello! This is a bit too crazy. God went mad out of love for us. Then we must be very lovely. What we have stressed in the past is how lovely God must be that he can love us like this. But nobody has yet said how lovely we must be, that God could fall for us like this. Both are true.

Think of it! God went mad out of love for me and you!

That’s something to savour on the way to work each day.