I am imagining Him waking in the night and watching His mother’s face as she slept before He woke her.
When my children were born, I held them in my arms in the delivery room, and I looked at their faces. My eyes scanned their head and hair and ears and cheeks. I could not stop myself from looking at their skin and every indentation of their face. I felt that my eyes were glued to them.
During the first sleepless night in the hospital following their births, I remember the feeling of complete and utter exhaustion and yet, I remember lying in my hospital bed and turning to the side so that I could watch the face of the little creature who was sleeping in the crib next to me.
As they have grown older, I have continued to watch their faces. I continue to trace the patterns on their skin, and the hair on their heads. I have continued to study the way they look as I watch their faces. I notice the freckles and marks and splodges and spots.
I have been thinking about that today – those first few days of watching my children’s faces, and the continuous watching today.
And as I have been thinking about this, I have also been thinking about how God must watch my face (and all of me). I have been reflecting on how He must study the ways of me – knowing me more than I could ever know myself because He made me. And I have been thinking about how He must never get tired of watching me as I never get tired of watching my own children.
I have been thinking about how God must watch me lovingly – how he has spent eternity watching my face and my heart and my soul. And in thinking about that, I have started to reflect on the way that God has watched His Mother’s face.
I have been reflecting on how He must have watched His Mother with so much love. I can see His baby eyes following her face as she sang to Him and prayed with Him. I am imagining Him waking in the night and watching His mother’s face as she slept before He woke her.
I am imagining the quiet wonder on His face for the love she had for Him. For He saw with His infant eyes, and knew with His Divine soul the sacrifices His Holy Mother had made for Him and for all of humanity. And I am trying to picture what that expression of love on His face for His mother must have been. I am trying to imagine the magnitude of His love for her and the extent of His fascination with every freckle and mark and line on her face.
Today, I am reflecting on the moment when I can see – with my own eyes – the expression on the Holy Face of God as He looks at His Mother, His Perfect Daughter, and His Spouse. And I think I could spend eternity reflecting on a vision like that…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.