“Before I ever prayed, God loved me; and before I ever sought, God found me.” -
Julian of Norwich
This is the truth we forget, and in forgetting
it, we lose our way. We believe that we are not worthy of love. We begin our
spiritual lives from fear, guilt, or shame, what begins in negativity stays
there. Jesus shows us another beginning. Life with God does starts with
belovedness.
Jesus goes to John, someone lesser in authority
and status, and allows something to be done to him. He does not defend his dignity. He consents. Baptism means to be dipped, to be immersed.
Jesus is immersed not only in water, but in vulnerability itself. Then the heavens open. God does not give him a
mission or a command. God simply names him: “You are my beloved Son; in you I
am well pleased.” Nothing has been accomplished, and yet everything has already
been given. Jesus is not made beloved in that moment. He is revealed as
beloved. it is a recognition. Identity comes before action. Love comes before
purpose. Even Jesus needs to hear it with his own ears. And once he does, his
life changes. He cannot be stopped. For the next three years, every word he
speaks and every step he takes flows from a center that is finally secure. He
simply lives from what he knows to be true.
Julian of Norwich understood this deeply. Love is not something God starts
doing when we behave well. Love is God’s first act. We are loved before we know
how to pray, before we know how to seek, before we know how to fail or succeed.
Belovedness is our origin. We spend our lives searching for our worth in
achievement, approval, success, and distraction. We look for it in the eyes of
others, hoping someone will finally tell us that we are enough. We measure
ourselves by what we do, what we accomplish, and how we are received. Yet all
the while, we fail to recognize what has been true from the beginning: we are
already beloved. It is not rooted in our
performance, but in our being, in who we are in God. Nothing we achieve can
make God love us more, and nothing we fail to do can make God love us less.
Love is not the reward for a successful life; it is the foundation on which
life is meant to be lived. We do not become beloved. We awaken to the fact that
we always were.
- Lilly Pushpam PBVM
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