Before we fall in love with God, we have to make time for activities like prayer, meditation and worship. Once we have fallen in love, we see there will never be enough time in all our life to pray enough, meditate enough, worship enough, as the love of God is worth.

It is like what two committed lovers feel, only at the magnified intensity of the all-encompassing: we never want to part from God’s presence, we are never satiated with giving and receiving love, we are constantly meeting ever-deeper riches of Who God Is. The mystery of the other person, our beloved, is inexhaustible; how much more so for the Beloved Above All!

Although today we are still lacking in our love for God, we nonetheless have moments of total wonderment and gratitude at the fact of existing. These are signposts, in our experience, of the eternal quality of our life as a communion of persons, as an inexhaustible relationship between I and Thou (finite and infinite). We cannot adequately conceptualize this eternal quality, because it is freely bestowed to us with existence itself. We intuit this whenever we are open to its majestic gift-quality. We cannot grasp the Thou before Whom we are, and yet our very being is a gift from the eternal Thou. We never reach the end of measuring the depth and grandeur of this gift we are, nor of the Giver who gives us to ourselves.

Likewise, we never reach the end of asking, what is the meaning of our being here? Not because we anxiously stand in a lack of answers, but because the final answer—we are here because God gives us to be, incessantly and forever—remains an unfathomable mystery we can only approach through prayer, meditation, worship—surrender to the gift of God’s everlasting love for us.

Therefore it is wise to attend each day with a sensitivity for wonderment at being, with gratitude for being. It is wise to recall our “history of graces”: all those signposts in our life so far which have indicated our blessedness, our belovedness in God’s eyes: whatever love we have received, whatever encounters have enriched us, whatever thoughts have deepened our appreciation of things, whatever events have shaped us and taught us on. Including especially our moments of loss and deepest trial, for these confront us with the mysterious unity of mortality and the immortal interwoven in time. This exercise of memory is itself a form of prayer because, finally, our being is an act of worship, regardless of whether or not we pray to a deity. For we did not give ourselves being, and yet we are.

All goodness, all truth, all beauty that we make or discover, emerges in homage of this mysterious source over which we have no control, yet which loves us.

Yes, the source of being loves us, “loves us into being” second by second and for all eternity, regardless of whether or not we love it back, acknowledge it, or render conscious homage. That is the irony of ingratitude: we could not even be ungrateful, we could not even overlook the gift, had we not the time to do so! and time is through and through a gift beyond comprehension, not caused by us but received by us. All is gratuity.

Time prepares and preserves us in a unity with the eternal time of the incomprehensible Thou, Who is the living presence from Whom we have drawn life all our life, and forever will.

Let us remember then that adoration is the fundamental movement of our being. Our time is here for us, an evident fact, flowing from and back into an infinity we will never grasp. It is our amazing privilege to catch even the slightest glimpse of this miracle: that we are and continue to be in being, without having done a single thing to deserve or produce such a rich and marvelous reality. Seeing this, I think we cannot help but fall in love.

*
O God,
Eternal rock of Creation and Beloved Above All Else,
You give us everything—all we have to enjoy and understand, play with and create—You give us ourselves.
Even when we pay You no mind, You abide with us and permit our joy.
Even when we squander what is not ours to waste, You give us all this time to live, explore, and make mistakes.
When we dishonor and betray these gifts, You are not pleased. But You are a loving Father, patient as the child learns to walk. If we turn to You, You forgive us, You stand us upright. For it is Your greatest desire to see us, Your children, flourish and run to the heights You have designed for us—vistas of glory and love in existence that we could never dream!
Thus even in our ingratitude, Lord, we give You thanks. Forgive us.

Holy Source of Peace,
Grant then that we may pierce the veils which separate us from clearer knowledge of You, from apprehension of Your true nature in our daily, embodied lives.
Help us to grow in holiness, which is our living approximation to the honor You are owed.
Keep present to our minds everything You have done for us, great and small.
Increase our love for You, O God,
Be the time of our lives, to the utmost,
That we may give You thanks forever for Your love,
And rest with You eternally in that very same love which You have prepared for us, and predestined us for, from before the foundation of the world,
Amen.