352nd Meditation
“I would like their (my creature’s) lives to be made sweeter through My law” (Father’s message to Sr. Eugenia Ravasio).
In the Psalms we find wonderful affirmations that express how important the Law of God is for the psalmist:
“Your law, my God, is deep in my heart” (Ps 40:8).
“How I love your Law!” (Ps 119:97)
And the Lord tells us:
“Whoever holds to my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me” (Jn 14:21), to which the Apostle John adds: “His commandments are not burdensome” (1 Jn 5:3).
True joy comes from living in conformity with God’s Will, for only then is our soul truly at peace. Our Father arranged it with immense wisdom: He Himself sowed in our heart the longing for Him. If we respond to this longing and set out in search of God, then our soul, once it has found Him, will be at peace “like a little child in its mother’s arms” (Ps 131:2). On the other hand, if we are satisfied only with earthly pleasures or even lose our way, our soul becomes clouded and remains unsatisfied and restless, as St. Augustine so aptly put it, “Our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
Thus, the joy to which our Father alludes becomes, in a way, a criterion for measuring the state in which the human soul finds itself. However, one must know how to distinguish between true joy and a passing feeling of happiness, which can be activated by various things, but which quickly fades away.
Joy in keeping the Law of God is certainly accompanied by that inner peace which the Father grants to the person who, moved by love, seeks His precepts. It is the joy in God that opens the eyes of the soul to recognize His wisdom and gives us the strength to follow His paths with gratitude.