God Our Love

Upon my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loves; I sought him, but found him not; I called him, but he gave no answer.  "I will rise now and go about the city, in the streets and in the squares; I will seek him whom my soul loves." I sought him, but found him not.  The watchmen found me, as they went about in the city. "Have you seen him whom my soul loves?  Scarcely had I passed them, when I found him whom my soul loves. I held him, and would not let him go until I had brought him into my mother's house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me.                       

- Song of Songs 3.1-4

In Plato’s Symposium, he defines love as the desire for the good. This definition has subsisted into the Christian scholastic tradition (with the likes of St. Thomas Aquinas) which understands God as the summum bonum (the Highest Good). For the Christian, therefore, God stands as the pinnacle of all our desires with love as nothing less than the pursuit of Him who has first loved us.  It is possible to come to an intellectual understanding of the Christian life as an odyssey of love, but such an understanding is not a complete understanding. Love of God involves much more than an experience, but as one does not know an experience unless one has that experience, one cannot fully know the love between the soul and God unless one enters into such a relationship.  Indeed the relationship between the soul and God is more important, more imperative, and more passionate than any other human relationship.  Adam in his loneliness was unhappy, but sinful Adam and Eve, together still in their separation from God, forgot happiness altogether.  In original sin we are born in separation from our Creator and, though redeemed by Christ through Baptism, we still live in longing to be reunited with Him.

Every human being lives with this unfortunate reality. We are all lovesick. There is a yearning in us, a deep emptiness which longs to be filled by something - Someone - infinite.  All our desires, if they be well directed, lead us ultimately to that divine fulfillment called the Beatific Vision, when we will at long last lay our eyes upon the face of our One True Love:

As a hart longs for running streams, so my soul longs for thee, O God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?  My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me continually, “Where is your God?”

-Psalm 42.1-3

O God, thou art my God, I seek thee, my soul thirsts for thee; my flesh faints for thee, as in a dry and weary land where no water is.

-Psalm 63.1

It may seem strange even for the Christian who is first introduced with the idea of God as our Divine Lover.  There seems to be something disrespectful, almost blasphemous about it.  There is indeed a danger in pursuing God as one would a suitor because our very conception of love is often tainted with the influence of lust and worldly passion; yet such a passion as one might exist between God and the soul eager for holiness can be understood as only human passion can be.  There is no analogy more perfect.  We must pursue Him and let ourselves be pursued.