186th Meditation
“Those whom I love, I rebuke and correct” (Rev 3:19) – the Lord tells us in the Book of Revelation, and it is a grace to experience this. Indeed, our Father’s love for us is not only a tender and warm love that gives us security and shelters us; it is also a love that forms us. He wants to educate us so that we may advance on the spiritual path.
This education that the Father offers us can be given in a very subtle and internalized way. It is not only our grossest and most obvious faults that need to be corrected by Him, for these too we will begin to notice with the passage of time. Our Father wants to give us a very delicate spirit, an inner sensitivity that perceives even the slightest deviations from love and tries to correct them.
Is it not a sign of great trust that the Father educates us in this way? Is it not a sign of trust that He corrects us, knowing well how sensitive we are and how easily we feel offended and manipulated, and end up closing in on ourselves?
“God is treating you as sons. Has there ever been any son whose father did not train him?” (Heb 12:7).
Although our sensitivity -often excessive- can be an obstacle to moving forward more quickly, our Father is very interested in our spiritual growth. In this sense, the Apostle Paul says to the Corinthian community: “I fed you with milk and not solid food, for you were not yet able to take it — and even now, you are still not able to” (1 Cor 3:2).
But we must not remain in this state, because, according to our vocation, we are called to “reach unity in faith and knowledge of the Son of God and form the perfect Man, fully mature with the fullness of Christ Himself. Then we shall no longer be children, or tossed one way and another, and carried hither and thither by every new gust of teaching” (Eph 4:13-14).
Therefore, we must pay close attention to paternal corrections, accept them and allow ourselves to be shaped by them.