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I have loved you with an everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3).
These words kept singing themselves in my heart, and I didn’t seem to be able to stop them. So, as I usually do, I began to “listen with my heart.”
Suddenly it was as though the song ceased to exist. Instead, I saw the Gospel before me, and it was opened to one sentence: Greater love hath no man than he who lays down his life for his fellowmen (John 15:13).
Suddenly and very clearly, I saw Golgotha and Christ crucified, but somehow the cross and his pain changed. They were a door to the resurrection.
Again, from afar a new song was coming to me. Oh, I could barely hear it, and it seemed to be composed of nothing but alleluias. I realized that this was love.
It was a love that no human mind could absorb, but that a human heart could encompass. Did I kneel? Did I stand? Or did I sit before this inner vision of mine? I cannot tell you because I don’t remember.
I saw this incredible love of Jesus Christ embracing everyone, no matter who we were. It didn’t have anything to do with education, knowledge, or any kind of superiority or inferiority.
It was the immense, fantastic, incomprehensible love of a crucified God who through that crucifixion led us to the resurrection, led us into the heart of the Father, there to sing thousands of alleluias because he loved you and me.
This is what I understood, and this is what I want you to understand.
How wonderful it is to wake up in the morning and to have as a first thought: “God loves me!” How healing to let that beautiful thought be absorbed through our spiritual pores, as a sponge absorbs water! Yes, God loves me.
We are saved sinners. Oh, we know that we will probably continue to sin in one way or another; but here is this beautiful thought that, sinner or saint, I am loved by God!
In our houses, there are showers and baths and basins to wash in and soap to wash with.
But we forget that as we wake up in the morning there is a whole sea of God’s mercy, warm and pleasant, waiting for us to plunge into it so that we can be cleansed for the day ahead.
God’s mercy is such that it takes away every kind of stain. I am not denying that there will be times when we will have to go to confession (which is another way that this sea of mercy washes over us).
But we should wake up each morning, knowing that God is in our midst, loving us! Knowing that he has loved us enough to die for us.
We will have good days and bad days, peaceful days and unpeaceful ones. But the majority of them should be peaceful if we remember that God loves us.
Do you know what his love does? His love binds us together in so many beautiful ways. He loves children, and he wants us to be childlike. I think he desires that we should hold hands and dance sometime during the day, at least in our hearts, so that the joy of his heart may enter into ours.
He is so open. What is more open than a naked man, pierced with nails, hanging high on a cross? Naked he came out of his mother’s womb; naked he died. Do you ever think about that?
Nakedness is revelation. In his case, it is the revelation of love; for he showed us what poverty is, as no one else could do. And looking upon him, we see this poverty resplendently blended into love.
Somehow, without our understanding it, this blending shows us the beautiful face of hope. It shows us the love, poverty, and hope that should flow through our days. Fear can have no place, for perfect love banishes away fear—far, far away!
This is the time, dearly beloved, to understand how much you are beloved by God. And, since you are beloved by God, you are loveable.
Never mind how you feel about yourself. Emotions aren’t too important when you are beloved by God so deeply, so profoundly, so totally.
Now, having understood this, we feel his fingers covered with clay and spittle, touching the eyes of our hearts and revealing to us that we are able to love one another.
We can really, deeply, beautifully, love one another. We can accept peacefully all of the little difficulties with one another which are present in any family, for nothing matters very much as long as we love one another.
We need to spend time in prayer so that we will absorb into our deepest heart the fact that we are beloved by God. And hence we will gain that immense grace—charism, if you want—to love one another as the Gospel calls us to do.
Why not start now? Why not let go of all the inhibitions, the anger towards ourselves and one another, the feelings of self-pity and loneliness? Let’s throw them all out, and allow our tired souls and tired hearts to expand.
Let us hold hands. Let us be childlike. Let us love one another. Let us sing an alleluia in our hearts.
Adapted from Dearly Beloved, Vol. III, (1990), March 13, 1976, pp. 71-73, available from MH Publications
