486th Meditation
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Mt 22:37).
Another passage of Scripture tells us that “perverse thoughts separate men from God” (Wis 1:3).
If we are to love our Heavenly Father with all our mind, and thus reciprocate His love for us, we must be mindful of our thoughts and not simply be carried away by them without examining them.
“My thoughts are not your thoughts” says the Heavenly Father (Isa 55:8).
What then are God’s thoughts?
“I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jer 29:11).
We know that God’s thoughts about us are always for our salvation. If we could only assimilate this truth, a change would take place in us, and we would be able to use this biblical quotation as a criterion for discerning the spirits of our own thoughts, rejecting all those who try to tell us the opposite.
By taking these steps, which consist first of all in rejecting wrong thoughts, we are already declaring our love for the Heavenly Father and laying the foundation for beginning to love Him with all our minds. Here the gift of fearing God becomes effective, because we avoid thinking anything that might offend Him.
In fact, any fear or distrust of the Father – with the thoughts and feelings that go with it – gives us a false image of Him and obscures His love for us. Therefore, we must turn away from wrong thoughts and make room only for right thoughts. The Father Himself assures us of His unceasing love in the message to Mother Eugenia Ravasio:
“I will never forget [any of my children]. I will always love him, and even if he no longer remembers Me, His Father and Creator, I will still remember him and love him”.
This is our Father!