LOVING THE FATHER

The great, infinite God loves us as a father loves his children.

We cannot swim enough in the ocean of God's mercies or be too convinced of God's love.

Just as a fish cannot live without water or a bird without air, we cannot live without God, without the personal God, without the God of merciful love.

With good reason Eternal Love gives this self-revelation: “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you. See, upon the palms of my hands I have written your name” (Is 49:14-16). It is love, then, which moves God as the educator to place high demands on us.

If I am truly a child, I am convinced that everything is for my best, and I do not doubt the Father's goodness and love. Suffering is always a proof of God's love. “The Father purifies the vine” (Jn 15:2).

People who say, in a childlike way: “The Father loves me,” even when everything has gone to pieces and they are overwhelmed with the most bitter sorrow, give the most effective proof of belonging totally to God.

We are capable of leaving the reins of our lives in God's hands only if we are convinced that he loves us more than we love ourselves. He is more concerned about our well-being than we ourselves are.

We learn to love to the extent that we know we are loved. It is worthwhile, therefore, to ponder over all the great, good, and beautiful things which God has given us so that we become truly capable of swimming in the ocean of God's love, in the ocean of his providing love and mercy. We want to make a habit of seeing all, even the smallest incidents of everyday life, as the eternal Father's wish, as his gift of love, as his searching love which requires our answer of love.

The saints became holy from the moment they began to love. This is in keeping with the other truth that they began to love the moment they believed, knew, and felt that they were loved.

True greatness is completely independent of circumstances. It consists in the total, childlike surrender of my whole nature to God.

True holiness does not consist in knowledge, but in my childlike self-surrender to the heavenly Father, in completely centering on God. It consists in giving everything, my will and my heart, in childlike love to the Father. A child lives entirely in the Father's heart.

Childlike love is warm and strong; it enables a person to do great things.

I can be a child to the extent that I dedicate all wishes and movements of my heart entirely to the heavenly Father. This self-surrender presupposes constant self-abandonment.

Childlikeness includes perfect holiness. Childlike persons abandon their ego entirely and surrender themselves completely to the Father.

Childlikeness is a concentration of strength, an energetic, firm, heroic striving to be alone with God. That is to say, childlike persons sacrifice their own selves out of love for God.

The great blessing of childlike love and piety is an original, affectionate, tender, loving communication with God.

If God for some reason or another deprives us of the warmth of our hearts, it is always a test of our faithfulness. We can be sure that this will frequently recur throughout our lives.

In the beginning, God is kind and gives us much enjoyment in love. However, the more perfect he wants us to become, the more frequently he will deprive us of the enjoyment of love. True, childlike love does not consist so much in enjoyment, but in selfless sacrifice, in the conformity with the will of the beloved person.

God tests our childlikeness by sending us spiritual dryness. These periods of dryness are the most precious times of our lives because they are the great means of bringing about detachment from ourselves. Only by abandoning our egos will we become true children.

This is precisely the condition: We should love in a childlike way so that the Father can pour upon his children the abundance of his solicitude and providence as from a horn of plenty.

Love is the compendium of all that God expects of his children.

If we want to become mature, upright, divinized persons, we should begin to love as soon as possible and seek to love as long as we live.

The whole purpose of our existence is to love the Father boundlessly, affectionately, always in any situation, and to be willing to make sacrifices, whether our work satisfies us or not, whether our work is acknowledged or not. None of this matters at all.

Why are we on earth? We carry our cross, we take pleasure in the joys of life, we glory in the success and failure of our work. However, the ultimate goal is always to love God the Father affectionately, firmly, perseveringly.

Forever and ever we remain children of God, small children of the eternal, infinite God. The game that a mother and her child play in the natural order is only temporary, but in the higher, supernatural order this game is and will have to remain a permanent function.

A mother plays with her children and in doing so awakens powers in them. She tries to make them walk alone while she remains in the background. The children should learn to be on their own, to be independent. A mother teaches them to take steps; she holds their hands but then releases them so that they can walk alone. She awakens powers in the child. A mother hides so that the child may seek her; a mother runs away from the child so that the child may run after her. - This is the game of love between mother and child. How happy a mother will be when she realizes that through different games, the child unfolds, responds, grows closer to her and becomes more like her!

God the Father does the very same. He awakens powers in us. How does he do this? He hides. Deus absconditus (the hidden God)! What does he ask us to do? How does he become Deus revelatus, - the revealed God, the God who openly responds to us, the God who reveals himself? We should seek him, the hidden God, the living Father who hides and even flees from us.

This game needs practice until our lives and our daily work are one great game of love. God awakens us and we let him do it. God flees from us and we follow him until we are finally able to say: My God and my all.

My actions should express my entire structure of being. If I am totally dependent on the Father, my actions should express the dependence. It is then understood that I am absolutely ready to be used by the Father.

It is above all childlikeness which detaches us from all conscious and subconscious selfish self-protection.

There are two kinds of childlike love; a self-centered and a self-less love; an enlightened and an unenlightened love. People with unenlightened love always center on themselves, whereas a person with enlightened love centers on the heavenly Father and is only interested in fulfilling the Father's wish and will.

Nothing can quicken the process of the spiritual growth, of the development of our noble qualities as much as our unconditional self-surrender and our knowledge of being accepted by someone.

Giving oneself is not the same as losing one's identity. Giving oneself in a God-willed way is more than becoming enriched by a you. It leads in a unique way to self-discovery, self-possession. It is a constant finding oneself anew.

Christ said, “Anyone who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (Jn 12:25). That is to say, if I give myself completely, I receive myself, and my nature is purified, cleansed, unique. I could not achieve this in any other way.

If I am not a child before God, inner promptings do not affect me. I only fulfill “my bounden duty,” but I do not respond to gentle or personal divine inspirations. Only the person who has developed an organ for the subtle promptings of divine grace can do this.

If I had a more perfect, childlike, tender, and affectionate relationship to the heavenly Father, I would experience my imperfections much more deeply as faults.

What is the reason that we are very often so terribly ungrateful? We remember God's favors so little because we greatly lack in tender childlikeness and because we are incapable of being alone with the Father. If I were a childlike person, I would be more alone with him. However, my heart is continuously on the go, always seeking some satisfaction in the world because I am still not childlike enough.

Once I come to love in a childlike way, I will also come to love in a firm, motherly way, and this love will then inspire me to serve selflessly.

How can we grow in likeness to the Father since we stand infinitely below him? Here we should recall the effect of true, healthy love. What can true, healthy love bring about? “Anyone who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him” (1 Cor 6:17). Philosophically expressed, love is a power that unites and brings forth a likeness. If I love the heavenly Father, I am not only united with him in a mysterious way, but I also become more like him, the origin of all simplicity.

Whatever God does, whatever he sends, whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, has only one purpose. Our way leads homeward to the Father. “Homeward to the Father,” is the goal of the living God in whatever he ordains and sends. “Homeward to the Father,” should be the fundamental tune of our entire thinking, seeking, finding, and loving.

Our way leads homeward to the Father. Even if the path is covered with undergrowth and brambles, even if it leads us past the most dangerous abyss on the right and on the left, our way leads homeward to the Father.

The way which Divine Wisdom has chosen for us leads homeward to the Father. We want to keep this goal in mind and view everything in its light.

The fundamental tune of our lives should really be joy and happiness as an expression of our inner self-surrender to the eternal God, as an expression of possessing an eternal home in God's merciful, fatherly heart.