Amazing Faith
- ARCHBISHOP LUIS MARIA MARTíNEZ
God's love has all the characteristics of the love we idealise in our ardent dreams, for we all dream; it so becomes the human heart to dream.
Yes, we want to be loved with a deep, tender, consuming love. Half measures do not satisfy us … Now let me assure you of this: Jesus loves us more, infinitely more, than we desire, more than we dare to dream of. Sometimes our dreams seem bold, almost absurd; nevertheless, they are far below reality. It is this very magnitude of God's love that so frequently disconcerts us. We think: "It is an exaggeration to say God loves me like that. If not even I can love myself that way, how is it possible that God does so? No, that is an excess." Right, it is an excess; infinite love has to be so. The Incarnation, the manger, Nazareth, the Cenacle, Gethsemane, Calvary—each was an excess … In comparison with our smallness, infinite love must necessarily be an excess. Yet how difficult to convince souls that God so loves them. If they could be convinced, how many anxieties would be alleviated.
We may go a step farther. God's love for us is not a sterile love, confined to heaven; it is an active love, provident, watchful, solicitous; it is a love that does not forget us one moment, that protects us unceasingly, that keeps arranging minutely all the events of our life from the most far-reaching to the most insignificant. I am not exaggerating; Jesus himself affirmed it: No hair of your head shall perish. Some persons may consider this hyperbole. Perhaps, but at any rate it is a hyperbole expressive of the solicitude, the constancy, the minute care of God's love for us.
Consider a mother caring for her first babe, watching at his cradle, ever mindful of his needs, anxious lest he weep or become ill. The devotion of such a mother cannot match even remotely the constant, minute, tender solicitude of our Lord. If only we had the faith to understand this. Not for one moment does our Lord turn his eyes away from us, nor does his hand cease to guide us; at each instant of our lives his power protects us and his love enfolds us. And if this is true, if God's solicitude for us is loving, unalterable, most tender, what reason have we to be disturbed? Can a child in his mother's arms be disturbed?
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Acknowledgement
Servant of God Luis María Martínez. "Amazing Faith," excerpt from Only Jesus. Cluny Media (1664).
Reprinted under fair use. Image credit: Suffer the Children by Carl Bloch, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Author
Archbishop Martínez († 1956) was a spiritual author and the first official Primate of Mexico. He is the author of the recently translated work, Am I Not Your Mother? Reflections on Our Lady of Guadalupe, published by Magnificat.