GOD’S
UNEXPECTED PRESENCE IN A POP SONG
The Venerable Archbishop
Fulton J. Sheen has written in his book Life of Christ that “Divinity is
always where one least expects to find it.”[i] Sure, one might think we
can find God in prayer, or when we gather in church every Sunday, or when one
reads his written word, but to find His presence… in a K-pop song?! Surely one
has to be out of his mind to think so.
But if God really is
omnipresent, then He can use anything and everything to reveal Himself. I mean,
He once spoke through an ass’s mouth (Numbers 22:21-39), so what’s stopping Him
from speaking through Sana Minatozaki and Momo Hirai? Absolutely nothing, I
would say. This (and I say this with full conviction) is what happens to me
when I listen to a song by K-pop group TWICE called Alcohol-Free, a
song they released just this year.
The lyrics of the chorus
is particularly striking:
I am alcohol-free but I get drunk
(Drunk, drunk)
Though I did not drink at all (At all)
It happens whenever I'm with you (Whenever, whenever)
Because of the way you look at me
You are my champagne, my wine I drink with my
eyes
My tequila, margarita
Mojito with lime
Sweet mimosa, piña colada
I'm drunk in you (I'm drunk in you)
I'm drunk in you (I'm drunk in you)
The song compared the presence of one’s beloved and his love to the
intoxication one gets when one drinks alcohol excessively. There’s something
about love that gives us great delight – a delight that is no less than the
delight that wine gives – every time we gaze at the one(s) we admire. Whoever
wrote the said TWICE song has described such an experience in a magnificent
way, at least to me.
But what people might not realize is that this alcohol imagery or
analogy used in describing love/the beloved is not original to TWICE. No, it
isn’t them not any other song writer or pop star who used the imagery first. As
a matter of fact, the analogy between wine and love is rooted in Scripture and
the saints of the Church throughout the years were aware of this and used it in
many of their writings and preaching. They particularly saw wine and the
delight we get from it as a fitting earthly representation of God’s Love for
all of us.
A
LOVE THAT IS BETTER THAN WINE
For your love is better than wine
- Song of Songs 1:2
I must
admit that the imagery of wine – not only in the Song of Songs particularly but
also in the Bible as a whole – is something that fascinates me to a great
degree. That sweetness and warmth in the mouth and in the throat! That joy of
being able to drink it with friends and family! The fact that the love of the
bridegroom is even better than that! How can we even begin to fathom it!
Maybe
we can begin be stating an obvious fact about wine: that when it is consumed to
a great degree, it can be intoxicating. The effects of wine can go beyond the
stomach. It can greatly influence our thinking and willing. It can make us
“step outside ourselves” in the sense of losing our own identity, at least
temporarily. In other words, it makes us “crazy” (We will return to this theme
of craziness later). That’s basically what drunkenness is.
This
fact might indeed be the reason why the wine imagery in the Bible may seem so
strange to many people, including (and may be even especially) Christians.
Isn’t it that getting drunk is a sin? Isn’t getting intoxicated an offense
against God? If so, then why would the Bible speak so positively about wine?
Why, for instance, would the prophet Joel describe the coming of the Messiah as
the day when the “mountains shall
drip sweet wine” (Joel 3:18)? Why would Isaiah describe the future of salvation
as a time when the Lord will make a “feast (for all peoples with) rich food…
(and) well-matured wines” (Isaiah 25:6)? And, more importantly for our
discussion, why would the beloved in the Song of Songs compare the love of her
lover with wine? Why would the lover compare his beloved’s kisses with “the
best wine” (Song of Songs 7:9)?
There may be two answers to this. The first is the fact
that, although getting drunk is a sin, drinking wine in and of itself isn’t.
There’s nothing wrong with simply drinking any type of liquor as long as it
doesn’t cloud one’s rationality.
The second answer may be the more important point that we
should reflect on, and it is this: that everything in this world, whether good
or bad, serves God and his good plan in their own way. This is obvious with the
good things, but maybe not so much with the bad things. The problem of evil in
philosophy and theology is obviously such a big issue, so we can hardly scratch
the surface here. Anyhow, let me just put it this way: bad things, or what we
also call “evil,” do not have existence in themselves. All they can do is exist
in good things, and thus ultimately point to these good things. The
reason for these is because “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed,
it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). Evil, then, originally has no place in
creation. In the beginning, evil was simply “outside” creation, “outside”
existence, and anything that is outside creation or existence as a whole is
simply uncreated or non-existent; in short, it is “nothing.”
In other words, when evil “entered” creation, it had no
choice but to be parasitic upon the good, just like the hole in the doughnut –
that “lack” in the center in the doughnut – is parasitic upon the doughnut
itself. Disease is ultimately presupposing the same good health that it is
ruining, death is ultimately presupposing the life it is killing, crime is
ultimately presupposing the good social order that it is corrupting, and so on.
Evil, then, is just a privation of a good.
This may shed light as to why God’s word speaks very
positively about wine and even its abundance during the time of the
Messiah’s coming! Maybe the reason we think it’s strange that the Bible seems
to speak in a favorable way about getting intoxicated is that we are focusing
on a very natural, very worldly, and thus a very corrupted image of
intoxication, namely the standard type of drunkenness we experience from
excessively drinking alcohol. Yes, this might be the initial image that
the Bible (and the saints and mystics throughout Church history) wants us to
think about. But maybe they are trying to use this initial image in order for
them to point us to the supernatural, heavenly, and redeemed image of
intoxication, namely the type of intoxication that comes from being consumed
by that mad divine Love that only God can provide! To put it differently,
they are trying to show us that the evil of drunkenness is ultimately parasitic
on the good of being absorbed and being drunk on God’s saving grace. The former
is simply a privation, a bastardization, a parody, of the latter. This may be
the reason why, although the Scriptures use wine as an image, the Song of Songs
ultimately says that the bridegroom’s love is “better than wine.” In the
end, his love transcends wine, though it may be used as a starting image.
In light of this realization, we now see the wisdom behind
the wine/intoxication imagery of the Song of Songs. We now see that getting
“intoxicated” with “wine” is not problematic at all, as long it is the
“intoxication” that comes from the “wine” of the bridegroom, his love, his
self-gift, instead of its bastardization that comes from excessively drinking
alcohol.
It is in the Bible that
we learn that we can get drunk even though remaining “alcohol-free.” It is in
God that the saints get immersed into the sea of that divine Liquor which has
consumed them. Yes, unlike the earthly wine that is consumed by us, the heavenly
wine has us consumed, has us embraced by it, it’s sweetness and warmth. It is
in God that we can truly say “I’m drunk in and through You” instead of
simply saying “I’m drunk in and through it.” The overindulgence we experience
in the Christian mystical life is an overindulgence over a Personal Being,
with every impersonal wine paling to even let us fathom such a gift.
And analogous to natural intoxication, this supernatural
intoxication can influence our thinking and willing, but instead of clouding or
blurring them, they become more empowered instead. Our thinking is divinized
because the Truth now has set us free (John 8:32) and Love has now allowed us
to “(rejoice) in the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6). Our willing is
supernaturalized because charity now allows us to “(endure) all things” (1
Corinthians 13:7).
Once again, analogous to natural intoxication, supernatural
intoxication makes us “step outside ourselves” and lose our identity, but
instead of destroying them, they become integrated in a higher “identity”
instead. Rather than merely existing as an “I,” Love authorizes us to exist in
as a “we:” us and God, and me and you; love of God and love of neighbor
(Matthew 22:36-40). “On these two commandments hang all the law and the
prophets.” And in losing ourselves, in dying to ourselves, we start to live for
others and more importantly, for God. Such is the essence of love. You never
know true love unless you know what it means for your own ego to die. “Those
who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake
will find it” (Matthew 10:39).
Such is the intoxicating love of the bridegroom. Such is
the love that allows us to reach into the depths of God’s very heart. Yet
remember that, in the end, earthly wines are nothing compared to it.
Earthly wines are simply poor previews of what we can have when we are
“overtaken… by God’s ‘crazy love for us.’”[ii] Lord
our God, may we be drunk in You, drunk in Your amazing Love. May we realize
that resting in your intoxicating presence will never be enough.
As Saint Teresa of Avila has written:
Well, then, let (the bride) drink as much as she desires and get drunk
on all these wines in the cellar of God! Let her enjoy these joys, wonder at
these great things, and not to fear to lose her life through drinking much more
than her weak nature enables her to do. Let her die at last in this paradise of
delights; blessed death that makes one live in such a way.[iii]
“You’re my… wine… I’m drunk in you,” says TWICE. We can
only achieve this only if we “drink as much as (we) desire and get drunk on all
(the) wines in the cellar of God!” TWICE has given a musical rendition of the
bliss that comes from being ecstatic with God’s consuming Love (whether they
realize it or not), but it is Saint Teresa of Avila who not only gave us the
means to attain it, but is also someone who attained it! TWICE understood the
wine imagery, but Teresa is the one who lived it. Saint Teresa of
Avila, through your intercession, may God lead us to His heavenly wine cellar
so that we can get drunk in His wines.
It isn’t just Saint Teresa who appreciated the wine imagery
in Scripture. There’s a ton of saints throughout the history of
Christianity that did. But, in particular, I would also want to highlight
another Carmelite saint: John of the Cross.
Saint John of the Cross saw wine as a symbolism of God and
the soul’s self-surrender to each other in love:
In the interior wine cellar of love (God and the soul, symbolized by the
Bridegroom and Bride) were joined by the communication he made of himself to
her... In that sweet drink of God, in which the soul is imbibed in him, she
most willingly and with intense delight surrenders herself wholly to him in the
desire to be totally his and never to possess in herself anything other than
him... (S)he is really and totally given to God without keeping anything back,
just as God has freely given himself entirely to her.[iv]
What does one commonly do when he or she drinks wine? He or she rests
on the wine’s presence. He or she simply enjoys the moment and surrenders
his or her whole self to the delight that’s experienced in wine. Nothing
else exists, just me (and some friends, perhaps) and the wine.
Like our experience with wine, our encounter with divine Love simply
allows us to rest in its magnificent power. As God has surrendered Himself to
us, so too do we drop our defenses and give in to Him, as the bridegroom and
the bride succumb to each other’s embrace and simply rest on each other’s
affection. This is what makes Christianity great: it allows us not only to rest
in God, but also for God to rest in us too, and this divine Resting in our
souls is a force that compels us to see the world as God sees it and thus to
love it as God commands us to. Just as falling in love changes our point of
view in life, so too when we fall in love with God, the world suddenly becomes
lovable, because we realize in a deep way that the world bears His stamp,
because He created it, loved it into being: “A new
commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I
have loved you, you also are to love one another. By
this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one
another” (John 13:34-35). This is the effect of drinking the divine Wine:
to realize that God’s falling in love consists in creating you and your
neighbor and for you to love another. This is the heart of Christian
discipleship.
May we, by God’s “intoxicating” grace, continue to “chug” from the
bottle of His heavenly Wine, the Wine of His saving divine charity.
“You are… my wine… I’m drunk in You.”
[i]
Fulton Sheen, Life of Christ (Doubleday 2008, 1958), p. 17
[ii]
Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience, November 26, 2008, as cited in Christopher
West, Fill These Hearts: God, Sex, And The Universal Longing (Random House,
2012), p. 41
[iii]
Blaise Arminjon, SJ, The Cantata of Love: A Verse by Verse Reading of The Song
of Songs (Ignatius Press, 1988), p. 71, cited in West, Fill These Hearts, p. 39
[iv]
St. John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle, Commentary on st. B 27, par. 5-7, in
Pope John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body,
Translation, Introduction, and Index by Michael Waldstein (Daughters of St.
Paul 2006, 1997)
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