The Greatest Love of All

אהבתי אתכם אמר ה'

מלאכי--

"I have loved you," saith the Lord.

--Malachi 

...הנך יפה רעייתי, הנך יפה

עד שיפוח היום, ונסו הצללים-אלך לי אל הר המור, ואל גבעת הלבונה

כולך יפה רעייתי, ומום אין בך

איתי מלבנון כלה...ממעונות אריות, מהררי נמרים

ליבבתיני, אחותי כלה; ליבבתיני באחת מעינייך

מה-יפו דודייך, אחותי כלה; מה-טובו דודייך מיין, וריח שמנייך מכל-בשמים

נופת תיטופנה שפתותייך, כלה; דבש וחלב תחת לשונך

שיר השירים-- 

How beautiful you are, my darling!
    Oh, how beautiful...
    Until the day breaks
    and the shadows flee,
I will go to the mountain of myrrh
    and to the hill of incense.
You are altogether beautiful, my darling;
    there is no flaw in you.

Come with me, my bride….from the lions’ dens
    and the mountain haunts of leopards.
You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride;
    you have stolen my heart
with one glance of your eyes…
 How delightful is your love, my sister, my bride!
    How much more pleasing is your love than wine,
and the fragrance of your perfume
    more than any spice!  Your lips drop sweetness as the honeycomb, my bride;
    milk and honey are under your tongue.

--Song of Songs

                                               

For so many people, so many holy, broken, badly hurt people, this is the hardest, most frustratingly elusive faith to achieve. To actually feel or even believe that God loves us with a passionate fiery love seems like a painfully distant, dreamy Arcadian island of fantasy. Long after the mind has reached a level of comfort in believing in God's existence, either by way of realizing that the intellectual proofs positing His being, though far from utterly conclusive, comfortably outweigh the arguments against; or through allowing the pure, stronger, innate faith of the soul to outshine the precious cognitive faculties because of the realization that "one does not kindle a candle in order to see the sun" (Petrus Damiani)- there are still miles to go before one can sleep and snuggle comfortably in the loving embrace of the Shade of the Wings of the Omnipresent, in the greatest love of all. Like a lonely, melancholy bud that cannot succeed to open its petals and receive the warming rays that are always tenderly hovering around it, the person who must struggle to escape the dungeon of terrestrial solitude and trust God's assurances that He is enamored with us suffocates within his inability to face the Infinite Love that shines with overpowering discreetness. 

While His existence can be logically exhibited, His love never can.

When Christianity (Judaism and Islam say the same-S.B.) says that God loves man, it means that God loves man: not that He has some 'disinterested', because really indifferent, concern for our welfare, but that, in awful and surprising truth, we are the objects of His love. You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the 'lord of terrible aspect', is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist's love for his work and despotic as a man's love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father's love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes. How this should be, I do not know: it passes reason to explain why any creatures, not to say creatures such as we, should have a value so prodigious in their Creator's eyes.
                         --C.S. Lewis

If only we loved Him as He loves us...Let us believe Him when He declares that He does...

A...good way for a man… to arouse and kindle the light of the love that is implanted and concealed in his heart, that it may shine forth with its intense light, like a burning fire, in the consciousness of the heart and mind, to surrender his soul to God, together with his body and [material] possessions, with all his heart, and all his soul and all his might, from the depth of the heart, in absolute truth, is… to take to heart the meaning of the verse: "As in water, face answereth to face, so does the heart of man to man." This means that as [in the case of] the likeness and features of the face which a man presents to the water, the same identical face is reflected back to him from the water, so indeed is also the heart of a man who is loyal in his affection for another person, for this love awakens a loving response for him in the heart of his friend also, cementing their mutual love and loyalty for each other, especially as each sees his friend's love for him.

Such is the common nature in the character of every man even when they are equal in status. How much more so when a great and mighty king shows his great and intense love for a commoner who is despised and lowly among men, a disgraceful creature cast on the dunghill, yet he [the king] comes down to him from the place of his glory, together with all his retinue, and raises him and exalts him from his dunghill and brings him into his palace, the royal palace, in the innermost chamber, a place such as no servant nor lord ever enters, and there shares with him the closest companionship with embraces and kisses and spiritual attachment with all heart and soul— how much more will, of itself, be aroused a doubled and redoubled love in the heart of this most common and humble individual for the person of the king, with a true attachment of spirit, heart and soul, and with infinite heartfelt sincerity. Even if his heart be like a heart of stone, it will surely melt and become water, and his soul will pour itself out like water, with soulful longing for the love of the king.

In a manner corresponding in every detail to the said figure and image but to an infinitely greater degree, has the Lord our God dealt with us. For His greatness is beyond comprehension, and He pervades all worlds and transcends all worlds… it is known of the infinite multitude of worlds, and of the countless myriads of angels in each world …[and] before Him, all of them are accounted as nothing at all and are nullified in their very existence…All these [angels] ask: "Where is the place of His glory?" And they answer: "The whole earth is full of His glory," that is, His people… to bring them near to Him in true closeness and unity, with a truly soulful attachment on the level of "kisses" of mouth to mouth, by means of uttering the word of God…also with a form of "embrace," namely, the fulfillment of the positive precepts…of the King…

Like one who betrothes a wife that she may be united with him with a perfect bond, as is written: "And he shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be one flesh." Exactly so, and even infinitely surpassing, is the union of the divine soul…with the light of the blessed En Sof (Infinite).

Therefore did Solomon, peace unto him, in the Song of Songs compare this union with the union of bridegroom and bride in attachment, desire, and pleasure, embrace and kissing…For through the union of the soul with, and its absorption into, the light of the blessed En Sof, it attains the quality and degree of the holiness of the blessed En Sof Himself, since it unites itself with, and is integrated into, Him, may He be blessed, and they become One in reality…for the corporeality of the body does not prevent the union of the soul with the light of the blessed En Sof, Who fills all worlds, and as is written: "Yea, the darkness hideth not from Thee."

      --Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, Tanya Ch. 46