September 21, 2025 Essay: The Abiding Love of God
This morning, I watched the sunrise from my window. It rose slowly, painting the skies a dull pinkish-gray before rising fully over the horizon and illuminating the homes and storefronts scattered across the hills and valleys below. The arresting view is a far cry from my typical mornings in New York City, where I usually can’t see the sunrise from my first-floor apartment windows, which are blocked in on all sides by other apartment buildings. Everything seems different here in Bethlehem, in the Holy Land—a far cry from home in so many ways, yet strikingly familiar in the most important way: in the deep and abiding presence of God’s love for all of us, even amidst considerable pain, suffering, and ongoing challenges. It is this fact that has provided the backdrop to my first visit to the Holy Land, and which has permeated all the wonderful conversations and interactions I’ve had here over the past week or so.
By the time you read this, I will have returned home and will be eagerly hoping to meet as many of you in person as possible. To start with, it has been nothing short of a joy and a blessing to have joined the St. Ignatius Loyola community at the beginning of the Summer as the new Pastoral Associate for Ignatian Spirituality and Faith Formation. The Summer provided a time for settling in, for deep reflection, and also for laying some foundations for our parish’s new sisterhood relationship with St. Catherine’s Parish of the Church of the Nativity. When I wrote this reflection from the birthplace of Jesus, my two feet were planted on the soil that the Holy Family trod on, and I was reminded (in a quite visceral way) of the depth of God’s love for us. God certainly didn’t need to enter the world in this way: in the form of a fragile child born in poverty, to parents already viewed as outcasts in many ways by their society, in a region fraught with discord and instability. No, God didn’t need to be with us in this way. However, God chose to give us Jesus because of a love so deep, so indescribably irrational, so magnanimous that it became Truth. God wanted to be with us so fully and truly that God entered humanity in this tiny, little place called Bethlehem.
“Though our Lord Jesus Christ was rich, he became poor, so that by his poverty, you might become rich.” — 2 Corinthians 8:9
As Christians, the Bethlehem of Jesus’ birth has always been part of our life stories, even if just in reference to the physical place we remember each year at Christmastime. But how wonderful it is that our parish community now gets to entangle our stories with the Bethlehem of today, to grow in faith alongside our brothers and sisters who still root themselves here, and to be able to more deeply entrench the birthplace of Christ within our own graced histories in a new & personal way.
In Ignatian Spirituality, reflecting on and sharing our “graced history” is not merely a flowery concept, but an important exercise in viewing our past and present experiences in light of God’s abundant love for us. As we recollect and examine the pivotal moments of our life, we are called to actively seek where God’s grace has been present through all the many instances of consolation and desolation. We are invited to sit in gratitude of how God lovingly accompanies us through every high and low, and how the Holy Spirit is constantly working to draw us more deeply into the fullness of our humanity.
As we get to know one another better, I am so looking forward to sharing our graced histories with each other and seeking to more fully uncover how God is working through all of us to build a stronger faith community at St. Ignatius. Let us seek one another out—as God continuously seeks us out—so that we might all grow in deeper love and continue to flourish through God’s grace that is so abundantly poured out. Mashallah!
+AMDG+
— Roxanne De La Torre, Pastoral Associate for Ignatian Spirituality and Faith Formation