499th Meditation
To know our Father better means to love Him more. When the gifts of the Holy Spirit unfold in us, especially the gift of understanding and wisdom, we experience a stronger encounter with the love of our Father. It kindles in us a fire that can completely seize us. Then we also understand better the following words of the Father’s Message:
“No one has yet understood the infinite desire of My divine, paternal Heart to be known, loved and honoured by all men, the just and the sinful. These are the three gifts that I wish to receive in homage from man, so that I may always be merciful and good even towards the most hardened sinners”.
Let us also remember these words of Jesus, “I have come to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were blazing already!” (Lk 12:49).
So it is not just that we believe in this love of God, that we hear about it and feel secure in it, as important as all this is. But we must have a longing to understand the desires of God’s heart, so that we come into direct contact with this love and that it inflames us. This burning desire of God that men should know, honour and love Him then becomes our own desire and a continual impulse of the Holy Spirit, moved by love for both God and men.
When we are inflamed by this love, we will cast with the Lord the net of His love, even if every effort seems to be in vain. Let us think of St. Peter, when, after a whole night of toiling without catching anything, the Lord exhorts him to cast his nets again. And behold, they netted such a huge number of fish that their nets began to tear (Lk 5:4-7).