“I wish (…) that you could console Me and love Me for half an hour each day” (Father’s message to Sister Eugenia Ravasio).
Mother Eugenia, to whom our Heavenly Father addressed these words, clarifies that this desire of the Father extends to all His children. Indeed, it is a great comfort to Him that His children confidently turn to Him and devote time to Him. Love needs this space where it is about the other person; in this case, God Himself. Let us remember that, according to the testimony of the Gospels, Jesus withdrew before dawn to be alone with His Father (Mk 1:35). These moments are of inestimable value: the intimate dialogue with the Father, the permanence with Him…
However, this is not only a great joy for us, but also for our Heavenly Father. This is His great desire, to be able to grant us all His love, to delight in our reciprocity and to be consoled by it. We know well that the Lord often finds Himself before closed hearts. He asks to be let in, but not infrequently He is rejected or ignored. So how comforting it will be for Him that His children take the time to be with Him and to love Him!
The context in which the Father pronounces these words brings up another essential point. He tells us that, through these moments of intimacy with Him, He wants to “gain the hearts of His children, to be well disposed to the work of spreading this worship.”
If we fulfill this desire of our Father, dedicating a special time to Him (certainly to the extent of each one’s possibilities), the fervor to serve in this Work of love and to spread it will grow in us. The interior encounter with the Heart of the Father inflames our love to put ourselves at the service of this work that is so important to Him. In other words, our apostolic zeal will grow, the zeal for that message that is so crucial for all: that they are beloved children of the Father, called to walk His ways in order to receive the love of God and to correspond to it.