Today’s music helps us meditate on the mystery of our Baptism through the words of Psalm 139. Listen below:

God is nearer to us than we are even to ourselves. Before we were even knit within our mother’s womb, God called us to himself. We were created to share in his life. In this beautiful hymn by Bernadette Farrell, sung by the Notre Dame Folk Choir, the words of the psalmist celebrate our identity as chosen and beloved by God. For most of us, our baptisms occurred before we can remember them. We can easily forget the immense dignity of being persons baptized into Christ’s body. Our hope is that this song brings to mind this powerful love of God which brings us into union with him and his grace in the Sacrament of Baptism.

As you listen to this hymn, we invite you to meditate and pray with the following questions:

1. The third verse speaks of God’s intimacy: “you are with me beyond my understanding.” Even in moments of loneliness, darkness, or despondency, God is with us. Where has God been with you so far this Lent, perhaps? Where is God in your neighbor? In your workplace?

2. “Still I search for shelter from your light,” sings the choir. In what ways do we hide from God or shy away from our identity as God’s adopted daughters and sons through Baptism? What parts of who we are are we afraid of sharing with God? What fears or anxieties are keeping us from living fully in God’s light?

3. “For the wonder of who I am I praise you.” God loved us before all time; the only reason we exist is because of God’s love for us, each of us wholly unique and intended images of God. In Baptism, Christ has claimed us as his own. The other identities we have or narratives we live—as humans who have made errors or suffered failures, as members of a certain class or race, as children of wounded family relationships—are all subsumed into this core identity of Baptism as partakers in Christ’s death and resurrection. In Baptism, our narrative is joined to Christ: we are, like Christ, a story of death and resurrection. Christ becomes our identity. What narrative in your life is Christ seeking to transform? What scars are in need of healing so that we can see ourselves as a masterpiece, a work of art, and sing along with the choir: “for the wonder of who I am, I praise you”?

4. The ending verse of Farrell’s hymn proclaims: “in your hands, all creation is made new.” In Christ’s love, in Christ’s death and Resurrection, the entire cosmos is baptized into God’s love. What grace do we need from God today to be made into new creations?

Image Credits: 

Thumbnail: “Reflection in Baptismal Font”, StevenW. via Flickr(CC BY-SA 2.0)