118th Meditation
“My children, I am the source of all graces and benefits; but, even more, I am an abyss of love. Have you contemplated the immense Ocean of My mercy? Come, see and immerse yourselves in the immensity of My love” (Message of the Father to Sister Eugenia Ravasio).
The Father invites us again and again to immerse ourselves in His love. All the mystics speak of it and long to be enveloped and transformed by this love.
Among the three cardinal virtues, love has primacy and is the greatest, and St. Paul makes it very clear to us that even the charismatic gifts profit a man nothing if love does not dwell in him (cf. 1 Cor 13:1-3).
The most important thing, then, is love, which we experience to the full in God and which we can accept to the extent that our heart is prepared for it. There is no doubt that we grow in love when we carry out works of charity, which we should indeed practice with fervor.
However, according to the words we heard today in Father’s Message, it is necessary that we first know and discover this love more deeply and that we find our home in it. This is what the Father offers us…
Thus, our gaze is directed, in the first instance, to the ocean of the Heavenly Father’s mercy. If we are sure of His mercy, then we can come to Him with all that we are and all that we have, including our shadows, and we can immerse ourselves in His boundless love.
That trust will then grow, which is the prerequisite on our part to abandoning ourselves totally to the Lord. Now we will come to know the “abyss of His love”. To throw ourselves into it, there is no need for assurances, reservations or conditions. Rather, we can simply throw ourselves into the arms of God, and then we will always and everywhere encounter only His love.
This love melts the hardness of our heart. It is a spiritual fire that burns, warms and illuminates, without ever burning us. We meet here with the Holy Spirit Himself, the love between the Father and the Son. Once we have known the abyss of this love, we will never again want to leave it, but remain there forever, because our Lord is there.
But we are still on our pilgrimage through this world, and we have to fulfill our service as children of the Eternal Father, so that other people may also know the One who surrounds them with eternal love. Thus, we could find ourselves in the dilemma of St. Paul, who, on the one hand, would have liked to leave for his eternal home, but finally, for the sake of those entrusted to him, decided to stay a while longer in this world (Phil 1:23-25).