Father’s words taken from the Message to Mother Eugenia Ravasio:
“In the Exodus you can read that God is to be honored with special worship. Especially the psalms of David contain this teaching. In the commandments that I myself gave to Moses I put in the first place ‘You shall love and honor God and you shall have no other gods besides me.
Well, loving and honoring a person are two things that go together. Since I have filled you with so much good, I should also be especially honored by you.
In giving you life, I wanted to create you in my image and likeness. Therefore, your heart is sensitive like mine, and mine like yours.
What would you not do if one of your neighbors did you a small favor to please you? Even the most insensitive man would be grateful to that person and would not forget his favor so quickly. Every person would try to do the greatest favor to the one who helped him, to reward him for the service received. I would be even more grateful to you if you would do me this small favor and honor me as I ask: I would assure you of eternal life.”
Let us reflect today on the sensitive heart of God. To do this, we should keep in mind what our heart is like, which immediately perceives when love is wounded. I am not speaking of that sensitivity which is rather an egocentrism, because of which one is constantly busy protecting and defending oneself. We must learn to overcome this excessive sensitivity by not giving too much importance to our own “I” and by not tying ourselves to our feelings.
The true sensitivity I am referring to is that which feels the offenses of love, which can be very deep. When love is not received or when it is not reciprocated, deep wounds arise in man and, consequently, not infrequently the heart is hardened. Let us think, for example, of children who grow up without the love of their parents…
This is understandable if we consider that the reason for our existence was an act of God’s love, which must be reflected and unfolded in people’s lives.
Now, the Father makes us understand that He also feels pain when we reject His love. In fact, He had already made it clear to us in the Passion of Our Lord. How much God’s love was wounded there! And this is repeated with every sin! This is why we are given the wonderful gift of the fear of God, which teaches us to avoid at all costs to wound the love of the Father.
Although fear of God is not the same as reverence, they are closely related. Giving honor to God is a great work. This happens in various ways. For example, in the reverent participation in the Holy Mass, the faithful observance of the Words of the Lord, a life as it pleases him… Above all, it is always important to refer to God all that is good, because, indeed, all that is good comes from him. By confessing this truth we are also glorifying God. On the other hand, if we do not do so, we are showing a lack of love and gratitude towards God, and also offending the honour that He deserves.
Our Father reminds us of all the benefits with which He fills us, and gives us an example of our human life to make us see what is the natural reaction we have to people who have done us a favor.
And once again we encounter the loving humility of our Heavenly Father. An act as simple as thanking our Creator – which should really be rooted in our human nature – is for him a reason to fill us with abundance.
We have to internalize and assimilate this slowly, so that it will permeate us as a message of love: The eternal God descends to us in His fatherly love, and He only wants us to be grateful for what He gives us. This means that He asks what should be the most normal thing in the world: that we recognize the love He has for us and thus honor it.
But we also have to consider how far away we have to be from Him, so that the Father has to ask us for the most obvious and natural thing.
Let us listen carefully to what the Father will transmit to us in the coming days, about how we can know, honor and love him more.
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
