The Absolute Safety of God

It is through encountering the absolute safety of God that we discover our True Self, 

and in finding our truest self, we find a God who is always and forever larger than we expected.

(Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation: Friday, Jan. 24, 2020)

"The absolute safety of God," it seems to me, is what everyone in the world is looking for.  If for no other reason, Jesus became incarnate to put into flesh "the absolute safety of God."  Without having this truth in front of our eyes, we could never trust in it.  Or, as St. John put it:

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched -- this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.  The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to is, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.  We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us.  And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

When St. Peter first encountered divinity in the Jesus he knew, his response was, "Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man"  (Luke 5:8).  I would call that "the universal response" to encountering divinity.  Fortunately, however, that was not Peter's first encounter with Jesus.  John's gospel tells of their very first meeting:  

Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus.  The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, "We have found the Messiah."  Then he brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, "You are Simon son of John.  You will be called Cephas" (which, when translated, is Peter). 

The footnote tells us that both Cephas (Aramaic) and Peter (Greek) mean "rock."

The same pattern occurs again when Philip finds Nathanael and brings him to Jesus.  Jesus "looks at him" and says, "Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false."  ..... Then Nathanael declared, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel."

In other words, our first real encounter with divinity is one that conveys to us "the absolute safety of God," one that reveals immediately who we are and who God is.  In His glance, in His seeing who we are, we know we are safe, we know we are loved without limit, and we know Him.  Later, perhaps, there will be time for "Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man," but for now, we know ourselves in an infinite and eternal embrace of love and safety.  At last, we are free to be who we were born to be.  He has called us by name; in fact, He has renamed us to be who we truly are!

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, authority, stability, and a life of relationships within the family constitute the foundations for freedom, security, and fraternity within society....family life is an initiation into life in society (2207).  In an ideal world, children would grow up within the "absolute safety" of a family life where they can be who they are without fear, even in their frailty and imperfection.  They can learn that it is okay to be less than perfect, because they are deeply loved and because no one else is perfect either.  Unfortunately, few of us have known perfect love and absolute safety within family life -- and even fewer of us have been able as parents to communicate that love and safety to our children.

So we "fear" the judgment of God, not in a healthy way, as children fear their parents' disapproval, but in an unhealthy fear of punishment.  Encountering Jesus Christ in the sacraments, "in the flesh," so to speak, and knowing the absolute safety of His seeing us as we are is the beginning of knowing that we are loved, that we are "perfect," that we are His.