A few months ago, I was talking with a young woman who was desperate for a romantic relationship. As we conversed, she shared with me that in light of her ache for a relationship, Jesus’ love just doesn’t feel like enough.
I felt a stinging sorrow in my heart immediately after she declared this sentence. I have had to pause and reflect on these words over and over again.
I have taken these words and reflected on them in the depths of my soul. This reflection brought up many memories of moments when Jesus’ love didn’t feel like enough in my feeble, frail humanity and desire for empty, earthly things. I thought about those moments in my own life, moments when I just had a desire for more...moments when I treated God’s intangible love as though it was something that wouldn’t satisfy as much as that the tangible and immediate can. And I have come back to a quiet moment again and again...again and again, I have found myself on Calvary.
I have imagined myself standing before Jesus hanging on a cross on Calvary, and I have imagined saying those words out loud…”Jesus, it just isn’t enough. I still need you to do more.”
I force myself to say it to Him, because isn't that what my choices and thoughts sometimes reflect? Haven't I shown Him over and over again that I prefer so many things over His love? As I say it out loud to Jesus, shame immediately wells up within every cell in my body. Imagine how that would be, Mary standing beside me, grieving her only son, hearing those words come out of my mouth.
Can you imagine?
And yet, we say it again and again by our choices, by our despair, by our desperate grasping at the tangible and what the world tells us will satisfy...Jesus, thanks for this and all, but I need the love of a boyfriend or husband...I need more success...I need a house...I need more money...I need more recognition...in order to be happy, in order to feel like it’s all enough, in order to feel like my life was worth something, anything. Your love...well, it’s simply not enough.
I have a very vivid memory from a conference I attended a few years ago. Adoration had just begun and one of my saintly priest friends had processed in with the monstrance and placed it on the altar. As he kneeled and we sang, he swung the thurible high and incense billowed out. I read his lips as he declared out loud with fervor...“Jesus, your love is more than enough for me. It is more than enough.” The power this moment held for me will stay with me until the end of my life.
I remember kneeling there, thinking...this is a man who will never have what the world promises will fulfill - romantic relationships, money, sex, or worldly power. And yet, He knows that when you kneel before the King, and when you go about your day in the presence of the almighty God, and as you live your one life here on earth - His love is, and will forever be, more than enough.
Maybe you find yourself believing that you need more than His inestimable love - that if you just had "X” then you’d finally have arrived or feel the fulfillment you deeply long for. In these moments, as I will, I want to invite you into this imagining…
Stand before him on Calvary, and try saying it out loud,
Jesus, your love just isn’t enough.
See if you can even get the first two words out as He hangs there, broken and bleeding for you.
Maybe this is the place where we need to go - to stand before Him, to gaze at Him, and to remember...this is everything. There was nothing more He could have done to prove the incalculable depths of His love. There was nothing more He could have given for you than His life. Dig into the infinite satisfaction that can be found in this love and this love alone. It is all available to you, there for the digging, for the accepting, for the seeking. If all of Himself - His body, blood, soul, and divinity - is not enough for you, what will ever be?