One of my favorite stories from Antiquity is the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, as told by Ovid. It is a story of forbidden love between two young lovers, who find a way to communicate through a crack in the wall that separates their two houses. They decide to meet at a mulberry tree, against the command of their parents, but due to a misunderstanding similar to that in Romeo and Juliet, the story ends in a double suicide.
One thing I love about this story is how Ovid explains how they found the crack in the wall. In the translation I have, “Love is a finder, always.” I think in other translations it is something like “Love finds a way” or “Love will find a way.”
Pyramus and Thisbe found a way, and nothing could stop them from being together, not even the fear of death.
I like to relate this also to the mystery of the Incarnation and the death of Christ. Love will find a way: but its opposite is also true. Where there is no way, there is no love. It is easy to imagine that there is no way that we could possibly be saved. God is perfect. We are sinners. There is a vast chasm between us and God, as was always told to me in Sunday school growing up.
According to justice, or at least the human misunderstanding of justice, there could be no salvation, because there could be no way that God’s necessary grace might be due to us.
For God, who is so great, to fall for us, who are so unworthy, would be the ultimate in forbidden love.
And yet, if God did not find a way, a crack in the wall that might let his voice through to us, calling us to meet him at the tree, where he would die for love of us, die of grief in seeing our death in sin, then we might justly wonder if God really is Love, or if he really loved us as he said he did. Because Love will find a way, and without a way, there is no love.
For God, who is so great, to fall for us, who are so unworthy, would be the ultimate in forbidden love.
And yet, if God did not find a way, a crack in the wall that might let his voice through to us, calling us to meet him at the tree, where he would die for love of us, die of grief in seeing our death in sin, then we might justly wonder if God really is Love, or if he really loved us as he said he did. Because Love will find a way, and without a way, there is no love.
And Love did find a way. Love became a young lover, and made himself capable of death, so that he might fear it, and overcoming fear of death, bore the wrath of the Father and died for love of us to make a way.
Love is a finder, always.
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