“You can entrust everything to me and always pour out your heart to me” (Inner Word).
How much it would help people to respond to this invitation of our Heavenly Father! Isn’t that what we are longing for? Aren’t we looking for someone we can trust without reservation, someone who will listen to us and understand us?
We continue with the theme from yesterday: the purification of the heart.
With the willingness to perceive one’s depths before the loving Lord, a double realism arises: one recognises both the dark side in oneself and at the same time encounters the mercy of God. One understands that God does not reject and punish because of the impurity that comes from the heart, but that His love has set out to bring light into the darkness.
It is not a question of integrating the shadow, as is sometimes suggested in depth psychology, and seeing it as part of the personality. This cannot be a way to transform the heart. A correct view of “integration” of the “shadow” is the recognition of the fact that there are abysses in the heart and that these should not be repressed. The shadow, however, does not essentially belong to man, but is the deformation of his very being, the inheritance of the “old Adam” who, turned away from God, fell under the dominion of sin (cf. Rom 5:12). He distorts the image of God, which God in His goodness wants to restore. For this process, the purification of the heart is essential.
NOTE: Due to illness, we will interrupt our meditations on the Gospel of John for the next few days and listen to a three-day series on the purification of the heart. An inner connection can be made, for throughout the Gospel of John we have encountered the closed hearts of the hostile Jews, and it is always good to examine our own hearts and offer them to God for purification.
‘It is what comes out of someone that makes that person unclean. For it is from within, from the heart, that evil intentions emerge: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, malice, deceit, indecency, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within and make a person unclean.’ (Mk 7:20-23)
“How can we ever thank You enough, O Beloved Father, for Your love and Your infinite mercy” (Hymn of Praise to the Most Holy Trinity). Read More
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you. “I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me; because I live, you will live also. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me; and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” Jesus answered him, “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Read More
“Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also; henceforth you know him and have seen him.” Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.
“Abide in my love” (Jn 15:9).
The love of our heavenly Father surrounds us, dwells in us and forms us into the image of Christ. Once we have come to know and accept it through faith, this love will always want to remain in us and will never leave us. It is divine love and therefore unchanging. It is a gift that we receive freely, but our task and our joy is to remain in it. And this is not difficult because God, for His part, never withdraws His love from us. Only we can turn away from it if we neglect to cultivate it and turn our love in a disorderly way towards the created, thus turning away from God.
“Whoever wants God to listen to him, let him first listen to God” (St. Augustine).
No matter how much God speaks to us, we will not understand Him unless we learn to recognise His voice, unless we assimilate His word and put it into practice. It is the Holy Spirit who reminds us of all that Jesus said and did (Jn 14:26), but He can only do this if we are willing to listen and pay attention to the Lord. That is to say, the right disposition on our part is necessary.
Jn 13:31-38
When Judas had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of man glorified, and in him God is glorified; if God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once. Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going you cannot come.’ A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus answered, “Where I am going you cannot follow me now; but you shall follow afterward.” Peter said to him, “Lord, why cannot I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.” Jesus answered, “Will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly, I say to you, the cock will not crow, till you have denied me three times.
