412th Meditation
“Send me, Lord, send into my heart the appeasement, the meekness of your Spirit; lest love for truth induce me to lose the truth of love” (St. Augustine).
Proclaiming the truth with love and living in true love is what would seal our witness with deep credibility. Indeed, this is also what our Church needs for her renewal.
We learn it from the Lord Himself, from the Spirit who has been poured into our hearts and cries out: “Abba, Father” (Gal 4:6). When we have a part in our Father’s being, we will be transformed in such a way that we no longer see people with our own, often unenlightened eyes, but with the eyes of God; that our unbridled passions do not lead us to overstep the mark, but that we always act in the light of God.
Jesus teaches us this over and over again… When the disciples were sent to prepare lodging for Him in a village and there they refused to receive Him, they, in their zeal, wanted to bring down fire from heaven in retaliation (Lk 9:54). The Lord, on the other hand, pronounces these unforgettable words: “I came not to call the just, but sinners to penance” (Lk 5:32).
So our Father’s way of being and acting is different: without deviating one iota from His holy Law or relativizing its demands, without hiding the fact that the transgression of the commandments entails consequences, He tirelessly seeks souls in order to save them. God’s motivation is always this: His unquenchable paternal love. Moved by this same love, He sends us His own Son, who descends into the deepest abysses of lost humanity to rescue it.
And this same love the Heavenly Father wants to awaken in us: a love that impels us to seek what is lost (Lk 19:10), to lead the lost back home and to fight for people until their last breath. This is to live in the love of God and, therefore, in the truth of love.