You Have Created Me!

Yesterday at Mass, during Communion, we sang this song:

Yahweh, You have created me
You have called me by name
and I am Yours
Forever, I will sing of Your goodness
I will walk now in freedom
to the kingdom of glory

The song struck me as we sang it, and it came back to me strongly while at adoration last night.

"You have created me." Such power exudes from those words. At one time these would have been abstract words about the fusion of a soul into an embryo, namely, myself. But Fr. Giussani's words have sunk into my soul to make this a living statement, an impassioned declaration. You have created me!

Here is my peace, here is the answer to daily worries (like the big car repair bill we paid today, and all those mounting expenses.) Here is my meaning. Here is my past and my future. Here is such security.

My experience tells me that when I "make" something, I care about it a lot. I have purposes for what I make, even thought they are usually hazy. I take great delight in what I make. And I'm just me, and what I make isn't human. So I know, I understand, that God absolutely has care for me smack in the center of His thoughts. It's His plan for me. And it's His plan through me to give His care to others. I cannot thwart His will, but what peace I win when I simply accept in peace His care for me, giving up my anxieties to Him.

The thought also occurred to me at Mass yesterday that often when we are pleading the hardest for a certain intention, the "clenched" state of the soul like that may actually cut us off from the answer God wishes to give. I think "clench" is really about our narrowing the exchange of love from our heart to God's (the flow most vital for us being the receiving aspect of course, making the giving possible). the image I have is of a child who is so upset she won't crawl into her mother's lap for comfort, won't even get close enough to be drawn up. We can get so attached to, so focused on, our issue that we lose sight of our need for the Lord's embrace -- and of the fact that this is where our need finds its answer -- and nowhere else.

This predicament became familiar to me when dealing with infertility. The advantage now is that at least I can objectively identify this kind of spiritual crisis. It still takes the act of prayerful embrace to deal with -- it's always the "dealing with" part that gives me an "oh yeah, duh!" moment. All the harder is it for me to try to say something helpful when I encounter someone else stuck in this predicament.

Maybe this is why godly men like Fr. Giussani come up with these odd phrases like "I am You who make me." Someone who really wants to know is going to say "what in the heck do you mean by that?" -- and then they are off as a seeker, as a beggar: truly human.