The Long Road to Bethlehem, Part 1
As announced yesterday, the daily interpretations during the Advent season during the week will primarily serve the contemplative deepening of the Sunday lecture, which is uploaded on YouTube in English with a Spanish translation.
First of all, God’s benevolent Providence must be deeply internalized, because it makes us better understand how God’s love called us into life and endows us with His everlasting presence. We are not a random product or a freak of nature that comes and goes and dissolves into nothingness. No, God created us in order to give us communion with Him and to let us share in His fullness (cf. Eph 1:4-6). As the Lord tells us:
“Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name, you are mine.” (Is 43:1)
This word, which God speaks to his people through Isaiah, applies to every human being from eternity. All those whom God calls to life are wanted and loved by him since eternity. Everyone is called to wake up and perceive this reality: It is the Lord who created me and called me by my name. He is my Father!
And further it says in Jeremiah 1:5
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you came to birth I consecrated you”.
In his providence, God looks at us already with a view to the redemption which he will give us in Jesus. We do not come to earth as orphans, nor are we ever abandoned by God, even when our earthly circumstances are lacking love and tenderness:
So it says in Isaiah 49:15
“Can a woman forget her baby at the breast, feel no pity for the child she has borne? Even if these were to forget, I shall not forget you.”
God wants us to live in the security of his love, to have him as a reliable anchor in this transitory world, to be sure of his love from eternity and to realise day by day and every hour of our existence that he was, is and always will be:
“Before the mountains were born,
before the earth and the world came to birth,
from eternity to eternity you are God.” (Ps 90:2)
God our Father, who invites us to entrust our entire existence to Him, to let ourselves fall completely into His arms, and thus to enter into the “Kingdom of Unlimited Trust in God”. This is what the Lord once said to the holy Gertrude of Helfta:
“My heart is wounded by a confident trust. This confidence does such violence to my love that I can never escape it.”
The path of daily meditations wants to lead us to live as “people in expectation”, people who expect everything from the love of God, His children, who perceive His wisdom in the here and now and know that they are carried by this love every day.