The Inescapable Lover

The other day, after I got out of the shower, I wrapped myself up in my bathrobe, as I often do, and I felt God. I felt God in my bathrobe. In my bathrobe. For whatever reason, that day, God decided to show Himself to me through the cozy embrace of my bathrobe—it felt like the warm and comfortable embrace of a lover. And it got me thinking about two things: 1) God present in the everyday things we often take for granted or overlook, and 2) God as lover.

Seeing God in the everyday items isn’t really that much of a stretch. It’s easy to see Him in the sunshine and the rain, in nature, in the food we eat, in the faces of the people around us. But I’m talking about taking it a step further. Not just seeing God in these things and all things but realizing that He is in them, holding their existence together. I’m talking about feeling God in my bathrobe, recognizing that He holds its existence in place with His very Being. The last Ignatian Spiritual Exercise is the Contemplatio, in which you meditate on God’s existence in absolutely everything and everything’s complete dependence upon God for existence. Whether we see Him in things or not, whether we feel Him or not, whether we believe or not, all the things of this world, and we ourselves, are completely dependent upon God for existence; if He were to withdraw Himself, things would just cease to exist, they just couldn’t be.

In this way, not only could I feel God in the embrace of my bathrobe, but I could rightly conclude that God Himself was embracing me through the physicality of that bathrobe. It’s an interesting thought, understanding that God is giving Himself for me to sit on in the form of this chair, that He covers me through the clothes I am wearing, that my skin that itches, itches precisely because He is making its existence possible.

Of course, God’s presence in my bathrobe or my chair or whatnot is different from His presence in the Eucharist. He’s not present Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in any of these created things like He is in the Eucharist. That’s why the Eucharist is necessary and so incredibly good—because He’s already present in everything but deemed it good to be completely present to us in His full humanity and divinity, and so He gifted us with the Eucharist. What an amazing God that holds our entire existence together with His very being and then gives of Himself totally in another profoundly glorious way. He is such a Lover.

Open Your Hearts

It’s easy, for me at least, to relate to God as Father, God as Brother, and God as Friend. But it’s not so easy for me to relate to Him as Lover. It’s easy to see God’s Providence as He cares for me throughout the circumstances of life, it’s easy to see God’s companionship on the road of life. But it’s more difficult to see Him as totally giving Himself and asking for the same in return, to see Him loving as one who wishes to be fully, completely, irrevocably, profoundly, and eternally united to His beloved. And yet that’s what the Eucharist demonstrates and what Him upholding the existence of the entirety of creation with His being implies.

We hear a lot about God as a jealous lover or a relentless lover, or about all of His qualities as lover (check out Song of Songs!), but what do those things really mean? What does it look like? Well, it looks a lot like the saints and it reeks of holiness. That’s all holiness and sainthood is—being fully, completely, irrevocably, profoundly, and eternally united to the Beloved. It looks a lot like prayer and sacraments, like seeing God in the creation around you, being brought closer to Him through everything we see and hear (maybe even through some secular songs), being thankful for every moment of this life. It looks a lot like feeling God embracing me through my bathrobe.

Theresa Williams

Theresa Williams

"I have become all things to all, to save at least some" (1 Cor. 9:22) basically describes her life as writer, homemaker, friend and sister, wife, and mother of 2 spunky children, all for the sake of Gospel joy. She received her BA in Theology, Catechetics/Youth Ministry, and English Writing from Franciscan University of Steubenvile. Currently, she is a homemaker and freelance writer. Her life mottos are Ad Majoram Dei Gloriam and "Without complaint, everything shall I suffer for in the love of God, nothing have I to fear" (St. Teresa Margaret of the Sacred Heart). She is Pennsylvanian by birth, Californian by heart, and in Texas for the time being. Yinz can find her on Twitter @TheresaZoe.

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