The apple of God's eye

Keep me as the apple of your eye. Psalm 17:8

Today at Mass we pray with the psalmist, "Keep me as the apple of your eye" (Ps. 17:8). Whoever is the apple of my eye is very precious to me. I love and honor that person in a special way, and the mere thought of him or her makes me smile with delight. So isn't it perhaps a bit bold of us to ask God to keep us as the apple of his eye?

No, not really, because we're simply asking him to keep us as we already are. Each one of us is the apple of God's eye! The prophet Isaiah reminds us that we are precious in God's eyes (Is 43:4). The prophet Jeremiah points out that God has loved us with an everlasting love and continues to so love us (Jer 31:3). Every other line of Psalm 136 assures us that "God's love endures forever." St. Augustine tells us that "God loves each one of us as if there were only one of us." And Blessed Columba Marmion, writing about the sacrament of baptism in his book Christ, the Life of the Soul, observes that we who "'put on' Christ on the day of our baptism…have, therefore, the right to present ourselves before the Eternal Father and say to Him: 'I am your only-begotten one'".

What is truly bold is God's deep, abiding, eternal love for you and me!

Thank you, dear God, for making me the apple of your eye! Amen.