© Congregation of the Sisters of Divine Providence
Global Connections, Vol. 8-1
Reckless Love
Sister Barbara McMullen
“Overwhelming, undeserving, reckless love of God for me” are the lyrics to a song I heard last summer while attending Mass at a neighboring parish. Something stirred within me as I heard that song sung and it has stayed with me ever since. I’m not exactly sure why, and yet as I awakened this morning, thinking about my article for this Global Connections, these were the words once again in my mind and heart as I slowly opened my eyes. What is it God that you want said? I’ve learned over the years to pay attention to these little signs.
As we begin a new year of Global Connections the Congregational Leadership Team has chosen this line from our Directional Statement as our theme: “caring for creation and the vulnerable on the periphery.”
God has been revealing God’s overwhelming love, beauty and goodness from the very beginning of the natural world. As Genesis 1:31 says: “God looked at everything God had made and found it very good.” Through all of creation we see God’s grandeur and beauty in so many varieties of species, in the land, in the sky and the stars, and in human beings as well. In the time just before dawn we see the dark lighten, a bit of pink peeks into the edge of the night, and soon the sky is golden with the sun’s rays and the azure sky beckons us into a new day. This is the “book of nature” in all its finest. The theologian and mystic, Evelyn Underhill writes: “The very meaning of Creation is seen to be an act of worship, a devoted proclamation of the splendor, the wonder, and the beauty of God. In this great Sanctus, all things justify their being and have their place.”
And yet, as human creatures we often fail to recognize the overwhelming, undeserving, reckless love of God for us. We fail to understand how we are all connected and that connectedness is really fundamental to our reality. Our own ecological crises stem from this notion that we are separate from, better than, or even more important than other members of creation. We forget that relationships are key to our very existence, and as the Synod tried to teach us, our vitality depends on our capacity for communion with the other. In his message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, September 1, 2023, Pope Francis said: “In order to grow as a people, we need to harmonize our own rhythms of life with those of creation, which gives us life.”
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