395th Meditation
“You must not fear as slaves the Father who loves you to the end” (Inner Word).
We can imagine how it feels when we love someone with all our heart and are ready to do everything possible for that person, but he or she is afraid of us and behaves as if being oppressed by us. This hurts and we feel misunderstood! Moreover, a true relationship of love and trust cannot develop in such circumstances.
Now, we humans have a very limited capacity to love and, however well-intentioned we may be, our way of dealing with others can still be affected by many things that have not been purified within us, of which we may not even be aware, and which can frighten other people.
But not so with our Heavenly Father! In Him there is nothing that could intimidate or oppress us. Therefore, one could say that it is a deep wound in God’s heart to be misunderstood in this way and to have a wrong image of Him. Often, this false image is not only a consequence of psychological elements that need to be healed, but the powers of darkness are also involved.
With this distorted image of God, true conversions are prevented and it is difficult for people to awaken to their status as children of God. The reality is quite the opposite: our Father grants us a freedom that no one else could give us. It is that freedom of which Jesus says: “If the Son sets you free, you will indeed be free” (Jn 8:36).
Precisely because God loves us so much, He can give us freedom to the full and make us His children. Out of love for our Father and for the dignity of our vocation, let us hold fast to the true image of our Father, rejecting all feelings that pretend to convey something different to us and sending them back to the kingdom of lies and deception.