338th Meditation
“In My fatherly goodness I will give you everything, provided that all regard Me as a true Father” (Father’s message to Sr. Eugenia Ravasio).
Our Father can and wants to give us everything; to give us Himself together with all that we need for our natural and supernatural life; to give us joy in the present life and unceasing joy in eternity. And the condition He sets for us to receive all this is very easy but indispensable: we must recognize Him as our Father.
In Father’s Message to Sister Eugenia Ravasio there is a very moving passage. Our Heavenly Father tells the story of a man for whom He has always fought, manifesting His love for him in many ways. Until shortly before his death, this man had not recognized all these tokens of love, but had lived with his back turned to God.
However, shortly before his death he turns to God, repents of his life of sin and confesses, “I ask your forgiveness and I love you, O my Father and Savior!”
Our Father concludes this story by saying, “I judge him with a Father’s love, just as he called me, and now he is saved.”
If we recognize God as our Father, there penetrates our life that reality which opens wide the doors of grace. When we sincerely invoke Him with the name “Father,” God is recognized in His Being and then also acts towards man as a loving and divine Father. In this way, the person earns a “right of love,” so to speak, because he also testifies to God as Father before the whole Church.
The devil could never confess God as loving Father, since he consciously turned his back on Him and thus obstinately chose evil. Man, on the other hand, can even in his last breath call upon God and be saved. May God grant that many more people will recognize and confess Him as their most loving Father!