1 Macc 1:10-15, 41-43, 54-57, 62-64
‘From these there grew a wicked offshoot, Antiochus Epiphanes son of King Antiochus; once a hostage in Rome, he became king in the 107th year of the kingdom of the Greeks. It was then that there emerged from Israel a set of renegades who led many people astray. ‘Come,’ they said, ‘let us ally ourselves with the gentiles surrounding us, for since we separated ourselves from them many misfortunes have overtaken us.’ Read More
A beautiful flower in our Father’s heart is His mercy. With it, and not with inflexible severity, He wants to judge the world. Mercy is His unsurpassable motivation to be ever vigilant and to go out again and again in search of men, so that they may open themselves to His love. Read More
511st Meditation
Indeed, one would think that in all those parts of the world that have been blessed with the announcement of the Christian faith, as well as the regions marked by Judaism and those where there is knowledge of the Old Testament scriptures, God should be recognised as loving Father.
1 Tes 5:1-6
But as to the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves know well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. When people say, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as travail comes upon a woman with child, and there will be no escape. But you are not in darkness, brethren, for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you are all sons of light and sons of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober.
510th Meditation
“Time is in my hands, but with your zeal and love you can influence it” (Interior Word).
We can take this as an invitation from God that we can even collaborate in the history of salvation, because the times of His salvific action are not static and immovable.
Lk 18:1-8
And Jesus told them a parable, to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor regarded man; and there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Vindicate me against my adversary.’ For a while he refused; but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor regard man, yet because this widow bothers me, I will vindicate her, or she will wear me out by her continual coming.’”
Lk 17:26-37
Jesus said to his disciples: ‘As it was in Noah’s day, so will it also be in the days of the Son of man. People were eating and drinking, marrying wives and husbands, right up to the day Noah went into the ark, and the Flood came and destroyed them all. It will be the same as it was in Lot’s day: people were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, but the day Lot left Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and it destroyed them all. It will be the same when the day comes for the Son of man to be revealed. ‘When that Day comes, no one on the housetop, with his possessions in the house, must come down to collect them, nor must anyone in the fields turn back.
509th Meditation
When we accept and internalise the love of our Heavenly Father, when God Himself dwells in us and His Holy Spirit transforms us, then we come to know our Father’s heart more and more. Very soon we will notice that He has an urgent desire to make His love known to all people.
508th Meditation
“Taste the sweetness of this health-giving water, and when you have felt all its delicious power in your souls satisfying all your needs, come and cast yourselves into the ocean of My charity, so as to live only in Me, to die to yourselves and to live eternally in Me” (Father’s message to Sister Eugenia Ravasio). Read More
Lk 17:20-25
Asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was to come, Jesus gave them this answer, ‘The coming of the kingdom of God does not admit of observation and there will be no one to say, “Look, it is here! Look, it is there!” For look, the kingdom of God is among you.’ He said to the disciples, ‘A time will come when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of man and will not see it. They will say to you, “Look, it is there!” or, “Look, it is here!” Make no move; do not set off in pursuit; for as the lightning flashing from one part of heaven lights up the other, so will be the Son of man when his Day comes. But first he is destined to suffer grievously and be rejected by this generation. Read More
