Ordinary Time - Week 08b
God's love for men
(From Conversation with God, Fernandez Carvajal)In a multitude of different ways Sacred Scripture tells us of the infinite love God has for every human being. In the First Reading of today's Mass the prophet Hosea uses beautiful imagery to express the unlimited bounty of God's love for his children, from whom He requires that they correspond with it. "Thus says the Lord: behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at tile time when she came out of the land of Egypt And I will betroth her to me forever; I will betroth her to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy…" The continual apostasies of the Chosen People are an image of our own backsliding and falls: and yet God went on winning them back through mercy and love, just as day after day - now also in these moments of prayer - He comes seeking me and you.
Elsewhere He assures us that though a mother should forget the child of her womb He will never forget us, because, He says, I have graven you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me (Is 49:16); and he who touches you touches the apple of my eye (Zac 2:8). Truly the God of our faith is not a distant being who contemplates with indifference the fate of men - their desires, their struggles, their sufferings. He is a Father who loves his children with a very different love from ours. Our love, even when purified from its dross, is always attracted by the good, real or apparent, in things... Divine love, however, is a love that creates and infuses goodness into creatures with total disinterest. He really loves us.
The love of God is gratuitous, since created things can give him nothing which He does not already possess in absolute degree. The reason for his love is his infinite goodness and the desire to share it. God did not merely create us. Such was his love that He raised us to the supernatural order, making us sharers in his own life and happiness, far in excess of the capabilities of created beings. We in no way deserved it: In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us (1 John 4:10). And it was Christ who revealed to us, in all its depth, the love of God for men.
Reminding us of that love, the Holy Spirit moves us to a total and trusting abandonment to God; Commit your way to the Lord, trust in him and He will act (Ps 37:5). And in another place; Cast your burden upon the Lord and he will sustain you (Ps 55:22). Saint Peter exhorts: Cast all your anxieties on him, for He cares about you (1 Pet 5:7). This is the advice Saint Catherine of Siena heard from our Lord: Daughter, forget yourself and think of me, as I will think constantly of you. Do we have such confidence in the love God has for us?
My Lord Jesus, grant that I may experience the gift of grace and cooperate with it in such a way as to empty my heart so that you, my Friend, my Brother, my King, my God, my Love... may fill it!