Today we come to the end with the father’s message of the first part of the booklet. It has accompanied us during this Lent until Palm Sunday, and also during the difficult time of crisis which humanity is now experiencing due to the pandemic, the extent of which cannot yet be estimated.
On the day I am writing these lines, the number of infected people recorded, according to the John Hopkins University in the USA, has risen to over a million. 200 countries are affected by the pandemic. For about 5% of those infected, the disease leads to death. Unfortunately, however, it is to be assumed that the actual figures are much higher.
In such a situation, the Father’s message offers a comforting certainty. God knows all the situations in which we find ourselves, just as He knows all the actions of man and the movements of the heart. Nothing remains hidden from him! Not with the eyes of a severe judge, but with the eyes of a loving Father he ist looking to us!
This also applies to the present pandemic, the admission of which can be understood as a rebuke from God. Even if the love of our Father is always ready to forgive the one who repents of wrong and perverse ways and sincerely repents, man must learn that he cannot act against the commandments of God, and thus come into conflict with God and with the meaning of his human existence.
The deeper meaning of our existence is to live with God in intimate union, to glorify him and to serve him. In this way we participate in the great project that we pray daily in the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”
Now we all know very well that we are still far from experiencing the Kingdom of God on earth. Here and there it is germinating, it can be discovered too sometimes, but globally seen we are currently confronted with a spreading “culture of death” which has taken on frightening proportions.
The Lord now puts his hand to the root in his message.
It is the forgetfulness of God that leads man into confusion.
This is why the Lord brings himself to mind as Creator and Father in this message. While all people need this fundamental knowledge as a first clear light in order to grasp the deeper meaning of existence at all and to wake up from the sleep of ignorance and sin, the Lord also addresses Christians. They too, who already confess Jesus as their Lord and Savior and try to live according to his will, should recognize even more deeply as God really is.
This addresses a fundamental concern of the message: To recognize God as he really is, the right image of God. The Father lets us know that there is still much missing. Above all, the Lord speaks of the intimate family and trusting love relationship that he desires between man and himself, and for which he is touchingly asking in this message. In this way he also calls the work that is to be established through the proclamation of the message a “work of love”.
And indeed, one consequence of the original sin was the loss of the natural trust between God and man. The devil tried to create distrust in man towards the goodness of God and worked on it all the time until today – unfortunately not seldom with success.
Trust, however, is a key of love that should be and become a matter of course between God and us. For this reason, too, God declares his love as often as we can see it clearly in the Father’s book. God knows very well that our heart needs trust in him and his love, so that it does not stray and replace God with something else, which on this way then becomes an idol.
Another essential concern is the introduction of a feast in honour of God our Father. The message of the Lord is therefore not only meant to edify and deepen the love between the individual human being and our Father, but it is addressed to all people.
I have pointed this out several times in past meditations, because God has linked many promises to such a feast and I would like to remind you that 7 August was proposed by the Lord for such a feast. It should not be difficult to prepare texts for such a feast. But the introduction of such a feast can only happen through the hierarchy of the Church. For this purpose it would be necessary to pray to the Lord.
God willing, I will lay down the second part of the book as a preparation for August 7th as a reflection. We all do not yet know what will be then in relation to the world situation.
But one thing is certain: God our Father holds everything in his hands and carries out everything according to his plans. This is true and we can rely on God without limit. This is why there is a growing hope and certainty that God’s goodness is always present in everything that may happen, and that God wants always the salvation of man.
Before we enter the Holy Week, I would like to send with today’s reflection a picture which should represent our Father. It is the desire of the Father that this image be spread everywhere as a sign of his presence. It is not the original picture, but it is painted in a kind of icon, which was modelled on the original picture. The original of this version is in our Motherhouse in Germany.
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
