Preface:
To all those who follow us daily or occasionally with the meditations.
In the coming days until August 7, I will continue the reflections on the Father’s message that have accompanied us in 21 meditations during Lent until Palm Sunday. August 7th itself is for us – according to the will of our Heavenly Father – an internal celebration, which some other faithful have already included in their lives. The coming reflections are focused on the second part of the Father’s message and are intended to accompany this precious message.
It is advisable both to obtain the text for the booklet and to consult the previous reflections in the archive of elijamission (you can find them between March 8 and April 4 of this year).
Previous reflections on the Father´s Message
For remembrance and information: In 1932 Madre Eugenia Ravasio received messages in Latin from God the Father. The messages were intensively examined by the Church and then acknowledged. So we are walking on safe ground.
Why these reflections?
From my point of view, it is something very essential. The first commandment that was given to us is to love God with all our heart, soul and strength (cf. Mk 12,28-30). This is the right starting point for everything else. Even the high commandment to love one’s neighbor flows from this precept.
We like to talk about love of neighbor in the church and easily the temptation can come to consider love of neighbor as the most important commandment. Before that comes the love of God in two ways. First it is the love of God for us and then our love for Him. This is the decisive thing: the love of our Father, proclaimed by our Lord Jesus Christ.
In order to get to know this love of God even more and to respond to it more fully, I lay down these reflections in the firm belief that this is pleasing to the heavenly Father and that these meditations can help to achieve this.
Word of the Father:
I am the ocean of charity, My children, and this is another proof of the paternal love I feel for all of you, without exception, regardless of your age, your status or your country. Nor do I exclude different societies, sects, believers, unbelievers, the indifferent. I enfold in this love all the rational creatures who make up humanity. I am the ocean of charity. I showed you the spring which pours from My Breast to quench your thirst, and now, in order to let you see My goodness towards everyone, I am going to show you the ocean of My universal charity, that you may dive into it blindly. Why? So that, diving into this ocean, souls rendered bitter by faults and sins may lose that bitterness in this bath of love. They will emerge from this ocean better, happy at having learned how to be good and charitable. If, because of ignorance or weakness, you yourselves happen to fall again into this state of bitterness, I shall still be an ocean of charity, ready to receive this bitter drop, transform it into charity and goodness and make you holy as I, your Father, am.
The love of our Father embraces all men, for all of them He has created out of love, redeems and wants to complete them. No one is excluded unless he distances himself from God and closes himself to this love. To understand this dimension of divine love, to remember it and to realize it, as far as it is within our possibilities, opens our heart to another dimension. We must not think that this is an emotional love, but the fundamental affirmation that God has for every human being. Nor can this mean to approve of bad deeds or to overlook aberrations. Nor does it mean that it is indifferent whether one is unbeliever or a member of a sect, because God’s love means all people. No, it is the divine way of loving, which does not rest until man opens himself to this love. In doing so, God pursues the sinner even more than those who already live in intimate relationship with him and have taken the right path. It is a divine love that surpasses us and that we cannot receive from ourselves. Therefore, let no one despair if he has not yet realized this love in his life, but humbly ask for it.
God revealed to Sr. Eugenia Himself what the images of the source and the ocean mentioned are all about: “The source is the symbol of my knowledge and the ocean is the symbol of my mercy and your trust.” So the source is the knowledge of God, which is deepening more and more. From here flows the living water of which Jesus speaks (cf. Jn 7,37-38). Knowledge of God means to get to know more and more his infinite love. If this happens, then one can leave oneself with “closed eyes” to this love without any fears, without having to protect oneself, without traces of distrust against God, without having to move within the apparent earthly securities or one’s own intellectual spaces. Just give the Lord our own heart, which in turn is so wide open to us.
This deeper knowledge of God becomes this ocean of God’s love, because we encounter His mercy and this greatly strengthens our trust in God. Yes, we are invited to an unreserved trust, so that we are always uplifted and strengthened by the mercy of God. We are to know our sins, transgressions and weaknesses, but we are not to dwell on them, but to sink them trustingly into the “ocean of mercy”. In our holy Church this is done in the sacrament of Penance. However, we are also invited to practise this act of trust often outside of confession. In this way a purification and strengthening of our soul takes place and trust in God grows.
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
