“Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” (Mk 10:18)
This was Jesus’ first response to a man’s question about what he must do to attain eternal life.
To encounter the ‘only Good One,’ who cannot help but be good, and to recognise Him and His Son Jesus Christ, that is eternal life. Day after day, His goodness flows to us from this Good One. It is our Father’s inner need to love us, His children, and to care for us with everything that is necessary for our temporal and eternal life.
It gives our Father joy to do this! And even more – He wants to give us a share in his bliss already here in this ‘valley of tears’.
In the Father’s Little Book it says: ‘If you love me and trustingly call me Father, if you honour me with this name, then here on earth the love and trust will begin that will determine your eternal bliss, which you will sing about in heaven with the elect’ (From the message from God the Father to M. Eugenia Ravasio).
Is it not exactly as our Father, the Good One, says? Does not the uncertainty, and often also the struggle that we think we have to wage against everyone and everything, gradually disappear? Does not the tension of having to prove and justify ourselves to other people, and much more, dissolve when we know that He loves us?
Let us simply turn to the Good One! If we accept His invitation, then heavenly joy will already begin here on earth. Can one imagine that in eternity one would not live in joy, or that mistrust and enmity would even prevail among the elect? That is unthinkable!
What our Father makes us understand, however, is true. When we respond to His fatherly love, it is – in His own words –“a foretaste of the heavenly joy that will last forever”.
Such is our Father, the Good One!