Seeing God, seeing all

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

I LOVE music and I like to sing. And one song that captivated me almost completely during my youth was entitled, “I only have eyes for you.” It’s a romantic ballad with a timeless, sentimental quality.

The music is characterized by a gentle, soaring melody that complements the tender lyrics, creating a dreamy, nostalgic atmosphere. The tune is catchy and easy to sing along to, with a simple, yet effective harmony. The lyrics are classic, focusing on the theme of being completely devoted to someone, with a sense of simplicity and sincerity.

Part of its lyrics talk about not giving a hoot whether the stars and the moon are out tonight, or whether there are millions of people passing by. They all disappear because “I only have eyes for you.” A similar song came later, entitled, “Can’t take my eyes off you.” It was an upbeat, catchy pop song about being infatuated with someone.

Both songs talk about how our eyes are affected when we fall in love. Of course, in these songs, they talk about falling in love with someone that hopefully will end up in marriage. It’s a human love that is exclusive since it involves the use of the body.

That’s because if love involves total self-giving, that love which involves the body can only be between one man and one woman, since the body when given totally to one person cannot anymore be shared with anybody else.

It’s different when we talk about loving God. When we give ourselves totally to God as is proper of what true love is, then we cannot help but also love everybody and everything else. That’s because God loves everyone and everything, he being the Creator of all creatures, creating them out of love. It’s a love that is all inclusive and universal in scope.

We therefore should see to it that our eyes, as a function and instrument of love, should first of all be directed to God so that we can learn to love everyone and everything in the way God loves them.

Here we have to train ourselves to use our eyes to look for God first, so that seeing him in everyone and in everything, we can manage to love everyone and everything.

Or we have to train ourselves to love everyone and everything, irrespective of how they are, so we can truly say that we love God, following what St. John said in his First Letter that we can love the unseen God by loving the people we can see. (cfr. 4,20)

We can do this if we activate our faith that eventually will lead us to charity, enabling us to love everyone and everything, including the enemies and all the other negative elements in our life.

We should be wary of using our eyes and all our other human faculties to only pursue an exclusive kind of love, a love that is only lived in the human and natural level. Our true love should go beyond that level. It has to be supernatural, nothing less than the divine love that God shares with us.

We should therefore try to develop the instinct of always looking for God so we can see him in everyone and in everything, and from there start to love everyone and everything the way God loves them. This we can do by seeing to it that everything that happens to us, every event in our life, whether considered humanly speaking good or bad, should be referred to God.

We should have an intense desire to see God in everyone and in everything. And all this driven by our faith, hope and charity.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com