In the last meditation we reflected on the source and the ocean of love that the heavenly Father wants to open up for us.
The spring from which living water flows is considered a symbol of the knowledge of God. But we can never know God better than through love, which is his innermost being. “God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him” the Apostle John tells us in his letter (1. Jn 4,16).
We also remember the precious gift of the Holy Spirit, the wisdom. With this gift we are able to recognize God in himself. It is no longer just a cognition through the works of creation through which we can draw knowledge about God, but a knowledge of God in the Spirit of God himself, that is, a direct cognition.
In the message of the Father it is said:
“I have just opened up a fountain of living water which will never dry up from now until the end of time. I am coming to you, My creatures, to open My paternal Breast, filled with love for you, My children….
It is not enough for Me to have shown you My love; I also want to open up My Heart to you, whence a refreshing spring will issue and where all men will quench their thirst. They will then experience joys they have never known until now through being so weighed down by the exaggerated fear they had of Me, their tender Father.”
Here the thirst of men is addressed. This thirst for God lives in man even when he is not aware of it. If this thirst is not answered by God, then man seeks everywhere an inner peace, which he cannot find in earthly things. From this innumerable substitute actions arise and the soul will always remain unsatisfied because her home is God. One can try to supress this feeling but the inner emptiness remains and it even becomes more intense.
Our father offers people his innermost being, his heart. He let this source (the knowledge of God) flow to us through the heart of Jesus. Through Jesus we meet the Father: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn 14.9). In the encounter with God our thirst for life is answered.
It continues in the Father’s message:
“If you wish to test the power of this spring about which I am talking, first learn to know Me better and to love Me to the extent that I desire, that is, not only as a Father, but as your Friend and Confidant”
This is a very far-reaching offer from our father and unfolds the different ways of love relationship.
If we have a more childlike trusting relationship with the father, the friendship moves more on a kind of equal level and the heart opens to a like-minded person, whereby there can of course also be a fatherly friend. But it is good to take our father’s concern to heart and to get to know him in it.
If God also wants to be our friend – this reminds us of the word of Jesus: “I shall no longer call you servants… I call you friends” (Jn 15,15) then the Father draws us into his trust and wants us to meet him on this level. It becomes so clear that the Lord is concerned that we lose an unfounded fear and a “wrongly understood reverence”. This becomes even obvious when God emphasizes that he wants to be a confidant of us. This “wrongly understood reverence” is a big mortgage in our relationship with God and also with the authorities of the Church.
Let us listen to the Father himself:
“What most grieved Me about My people, Israel, and what most afflicts Me still about present-day humanity, is this ill-conceived respect you have of Me. Man’s enemy has, in fact, used it to lead him to fall into idolatry and schisms.”
Through the right knowledge of God and thus the realization of a free and loving relationship with God, which carries the rightly understood reverence within itself, a relationship with God, with officials, with authority in general and with people in general, which is still co-determined by possibly exaggerated fear, heals.
It is easy to see how important it is to gain such a freedom, because only when the basis of the relationship with God is love, does reverence gain its beauty and dignity. But if it is still largely determined by fear, then the image of God is distorted and consequently also the relationship to oneself and to other people.
Harpa Dei accompanies the daily scriptural interpretation or spiritual teaching of Br. Elija, their spiritual father. These meditations can be heard on the following website www.en.elijamission.net
