May the entire earth exult and innumerable islands leap for joy with the tremendous news: our God is dressed in a mantle of mercy, He is preceded by tenderness and He is accompanied by loyalty. And forever and ever He will ride upon a cloud with the word LOVE etched on its borders.
Jesus came to show us the essence of His Father’s heart. To confirm what our Father has been confirming through the centuries by the Prophets:
“My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest” (Ex33,14); “Behold I will make a covenant before your people…and will do marvels …for it is an awesome thing I will do with you” (Ex34,10); “Do all that is in your heart, for God is with you. I have been with you wherever you have gone.”(Cr 17,2;8)
Only through astonishment at unconditional, gratuitous love can man be delivered from his egocentric isolation and freed from self-complacency and self-sufficiency. One must be free of oneself in order to admire and adore. Return to the astonishment of love. Only a child can observe the Father as He feeds the swallows, clothes the daisies, waters with rain or uses the sun to fertilize the fields of the just and unjust.
There is “no finality in adoration, not even that of becoming better”. Adoration is eminently gratuitous: it consists in celebrating the celebration of Being and love because He deserves it, because that is the way He is, so extraordinary, that it makes it worthwhile for everyone to find out about it, to recognize it and rejoice in the news, and that all should be happy that our Lord is God.
Left in the All Powerful and All Loving Hands of God, “the worshiper feels no fear of old age or death, on the contrary, in some way he participates in the eternal youth of God. This is why we admire the imperturbable serenity of some contemplative persons who go beyond the ups and downs of life.
An incomparable landscape contemplated by a sad spectator will always be a sad landscape. At the end, the important thing is the capacity to be amazed; this capacity enlivens situations that repeat themselves, and gives a new name to each object. It is this rediscovery, in prayer and in life, that existence is a celebration and living is a privilege.
At times one cannot measure the true depth of the words of Jesus: “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” (Jn 10,10).This is why daily prayer leads one to cultivate a plant in the heart with special care and indulgence: the plant of joy. And it only sprouts from the profound feeling of being loved throughout all eternity. And it is fed in spite of reticence and repugnance caused by our mistakes and weaknesses, because I am a marvel made by God`s hands. Even though I may have 30 defects, He created me and bestowed upon me hundreds of qualities for giving service to others and for recognizing that an infinite God, unfathomable in His ways, inhabits my heart. And it is from here that He asks each of us to transform our suffering into arms of compassion for ourselves, and our bowels into a welcoming bosom.
(Based on Father Ignacio’s books “Sensing your Hidden Presence” and “The Meaning of Life”)
