God's love

«Our senses need a term to catch an idea. Each of us, I am referring to us believers, believes, by the virtue of faith, in the Most High Lord and Creator, Eternal God, Who is in Heaven. But every being needs more than such bare, pure, incorporeal faith, which is fit and sufficient for the angels who see and love God spiritually, as they share with Him a spiritual nature and can see God. We have to create a “picture” of God for ourselves, which picture is made with the essential features that we ascribe to God, to give a name to His infinite absolute perfection. The more a soul concentrates, the more it succeeds in achieving an exact knowledge of God. That is what I say: the immanent God. I am not a philosopher. Perhaps I have applied the word wrongly. In short, I think that the immanent God is to feel, to perceive God in our spirits, to feel and perceive Him no longer as an abstract idea, but as a real presence, bestowing strength and a new peace upon us.»

«All right. But, to sum up, how did you feel Him? What is the difference between feeling by faith and feeling by immanence?» asks the Iscariot somewhat ironically.

«God is safety, boy. When you perceive Him, as Simon says, by means of that word, which I do not understand literally, but I understand its spirit — and believe me, the trouble is that we understand only literally and we do not understand the spirit of God’s words — it means that you are able to grasp the idea of the terrible majesty, but also of the most sweet paternity of God. It means that, should all the world judge and condemn you unjustly, you would feel that One only, He, the Eternal One, Who is your Father, does not judge you, but absolves and comforts you. It means that if all the world should hate you, you would feel over you a love greater than any this world can offer. It means that if you were isolated in jail or in a desert you would always hear One speak to you and say: “Be holy, that you may be like your Father”. It means that for the true love for this Father and God, Whom at last you perceive as such, you accept, work, take and leave without any human consideration, as you are concerned only to return love for love and to copy God as much as possible in your actions» says Peter.

«You are proud! To copy God! You are not entitled to» declares the Iscariot.

«It is not pride. Love leads to obedience. To copy God seems to me a form of obedience because God said that He made us in His own image and likeness» replies Peter.

«He made us. We must not go higher up.»

«You are a poor wretch, my boy, if that is what you think! You are forgetting that we fell and that God wants to take us back to what we were.»

180.4

Jesus begins to speak: «Even more, Peter, Judas and you all. Even more than that. Adam’s perfection was still susceptible of improvement through love, which would have made him a more precise image of his Creator. Adam without the stain of sin would have been a most shining mirror of God. That is why I say: “Be perfect as your Father Who is in Heaven is perfect”. Like your Father. Therefore like God. Peter is quite right. And so is Simon. I ask you to remember their words and apply them to your souls.»

• Bible - Book of Genesis
• God the Father
• God's love
• God's omnipresence
• Knowing God
• Let's make man in our image
• Love
• Loving God
• Memories of God
• Obedience
• Original sin
• Pride
• Redemption
• Representation and image of God

• Acts - Actions
• Bible - Gospel of Luke
• Bible - Gospel of Matthew
• God's love
• How to perfect and sanctify yourself
• Kingdom of God - Kingdom of Heaven
• Lessons and Teachings for the Apostles
• Love
• Love of neighbor
• Parable of the mustard seed
• Parables
• Sanctification

Man is “man” and wants to do things by himself without feeling that God asks but to help him. (...) “They wanted to do by themselves”, although I was bent over their needs awaiting to be asked to help them.

• Acts - Actions
• God's love
• Invoking God's name
• Man - God's creature
• Pain and suffering
• Pride
• Providence
• Union with God and Jesus - Living with God
• Words of wisdom

I am not “man”, I am the God-Man. I do not behave as you do. When someone rejects your advice or your help, and you see him in trouble, even if you are not so bad as to rejoice at it, you are uncharitable enough to look at him disdainfully and indifferently, without being moved by his shouts for help. Your attitude means: “When I wanted to help you, you did not want me? Well, help yourself now”. But I am Jesus. I am the Saviour. And I save, Mary. I always save as soon as I am asked to.

• Contempt - Disdain
• God's goodness
• God's love
• Indifference
• Invoking God's name
• Name of Jesus Christ
• Pride
• Sauveur
• Who is Jesus? How Christ defines himself

Endeavour to understand My need to love and to be loved. I have but this solace on the earth: to love and do the will of God.

• Divine Will
• God's love
• Who is Jesus? How Christ defines himself

«Are You an Israelite?» asks the man.

«Yes, I am.»

«I, too, or almost, although I do not look like one. But I lived a long time abroad and I got into many habits, of which these fools here disapprove. I am better than the others. But they say that I am a demon, because I read a great deal, I breed poultry which I sell to the Romans and I can cure people by means of herbs. When young, because of a woman, I quarrelled with a Roman – I was at Cintium then – and I stabbed him. He died, I lost one eye and all my wealth and I was sentenced to life imprisonment. But I knew how to cure people, and I cured the daughter of one of the guards. I thus won his friendship and some freedom… I used it to escape. I acted badly, because the man certainly paid for my flight with his life. But freedom seems so beautiful when one is a prisoner…»

«Is it not really beautiful afterwards?»

«No. Jail, where one is alone, is better than being in contact with men who do not allow you to be alone and come around us to hate us…»

«Did you study philosophy?»

«I was a teacher at Cintium… I was a proselyte…»

«And now?»

«Now I am nothing. I live according to the reality of facts. And I hate, as I was and am still hated.»

«Who hates you?»

«Everybody. And God is the first. She was my wife… and God allowed her to be unfaithful to me and ruin me. I was free and respected, and God allowed me to become a convict serving a life sentence. God abandoned me, men were unfair. Both He and they destroyed me. There is nothing left here…» and he strikes his forehead and his chest. «Rather, here, in my head, there are my thoughts, my knowledge. It is in here that there is nothing» and he spits contemptuously.

«You are wrong. You still have two things there.»

«Which?»

«Remembrance and hatred. Remove them.

188.4

Become really empty… and I will give you something new to put in there.»

«What?»

«Love.»

«Ah! Ah! You make me laugh. I have not laughed for thirty-five years, man. Since I had the proof that the woman was unfaithful to me with the Roman wine merchant. Love! Love to me! It is like me throwing jewels to my chickens! They would die of indigestion, unless they passed them out with their excrement. The same would happen to me. Your love would be a burden to me, if I could not digest it…»

«No, man! Do not say that!» Jesus lays His hand on the man’s shoulder, He is deeply and openly distressed.

The man looks at Him with his only eye and what he sees on that most sweet and beautiful face causes him to be struck dumb and to change his expression. From being sarcastic he becomes very serious and then really sad. He lowers his head and with a different voice he asks: «Who are You?»

«Jesus of Nazareth. The Messiah.»

«You!!!»

«I. Did you not know about Me, since you read so much?»

«I knew… But I did not know that You were alive and… above all, I did not know this. I did not know that You are good to everybody… thus… to murderers too… Forgive me for what I said… about God and love… Now I understand why You want to give me love… Because without love the world is hell, and You the Messiah want to make a paradise of it.»

«A paradise in every heart. Give Me the remembrance and the hatred that make you ill and let Me put love into your heart!»

«Oh! I wish I had known You before!… then… But when I killed, You were certainly not born yet… But later… when I was free, as free as a snake in a forest, I lived to poison people with my hatred.»

«But you did some good as well. Did you not say that you cured people by means of herbs?»

«Yes. To be tolerated. But how many times I had to struggle against my desire to poison people by means of potions!… See? I took refuge here because… it is a place where the world is ignored and which the world ignores. A cursed place. In other places I hated and was hated and I was afraid of being recognised… But I am wicked.»

«You regret having harmed the prison guard. Do you not see that there is still some goodness in you? You are not wicked… Your only trouble is that you have a large open wound, which nobody is curing… Your goodness runs out of it as blood from a wound. But if someone would cure your wound and heal it, My dear brother, goodness would increase in you, because it would no longer vanish as it forms…»

The man weeps with a bent head trying to conceal his tears. Only Jesus Who is walking beside him notices them. He notices but does not say anything else.

• God's love
• Hate
• Love
• Messiah
• Places - Cintium
• Prisoners
• Romans

My Mother had dedicated Herself to virginity for love. But, since She was a perfect creature, maternity was in Her blood and spirit. Because woman is created to be a mother and it is an aberration, if she is deaf to such sentiment, which is love of second power…»

Also the others have come near slowly.

«What do You mean, Master, by love of second power?» asks Judas Thaddeus.

«My brother, there are many loves and various powers. There is the love of first power: the one given to God. Then there is the love of second power: the love of a mother or of a father, because if the previous one is entirely spiritual, this one is spiritual by two parts and carnal by one. It is true that human affection is mixed in it, but the superior sentiment prevails, because a father and mother, who are such in a wholesome and holy way, do not only feed and caress the body of their child, but they also give nourishment and love to the mind and the spirit of their creature. And what I am saying is so true, that those who devote themselves to children, even if only to educate them, end up by loving their pupils as if they were of their own flesh.»

«In fact I was very fond of my pupils» says John of Endor.

«I understood that you must have been a good teacher by the way you deal with Jabez.»

The man of Endor bows and kisses Jesus’ hand without speaking.

«Please go on with Your classification of loves» begs the Zealot.

«There is the love for one’s wife: love of third power because it is made – I am always talking of wholesome and holy love – half of spirit and half of flesh. A man, besides being the husband of his wife, is a teacher and a father to her; and a woman is an angel and a mother to her husband, besides being his wife. These are the three highest loves.»

196.5

«And the love for our neighbour? Are You not wrong? Or have You forgotten it?» asks the Iscariot. The others look at him dumbfounded and… furious because of his remarks.

But Jesus replies placidly: «No, Judas. Watch. God is to be loved because He is God, so no explanation is required to convince one to have such love. He is He Who is, that is Everything; and man: Nothing, who participates of Everything, because of the soul infused in him by Eternal God — without which soul man would be one of the many animals that live on the earth, or in water or in the air — he must adore Him out of a sense of duty and to deserve to survive in Everything, that is to deserve to be part of the holy People of God in Heaven, a citizen of the Jerusalem that will know neither profanation nor destruction forever.

The love of man, and particularly of woman, for their offspring, is indicated as an order in the words of God to Adam and Eve, after He had blessed them, seeing that He had made a “good thing”, on a remote sixth day, the first sixth day of creation. God said to them: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth…” I can see your tacit objection, and this is My reply to you: Since before sin everything in creation was regulated by and based on love, that multiplication of children would have been a holy, pure, powerful, perfect love. And God gave it as His first commandment to man: “Be fruitful and multiply”. Therefore, love your children after Me. Love, as it is now, the present procreator of children, did not exist then. There was no malice nor the detestable thirst for sensuality. Man loved woman and woman loved man, naturally, not naturally according to nature as we understand it, or rather, as you men understand it, but according to the nature of children of God: supernaturally. Sweet were the days of love of the Two who were brothers, because born of one Father, and yet were husband and wife, who loved and looked at each other with the innocent eyes of twins in a cradle; and man felt the love of a father for his wife “bone from his bones and flesh from his flesh”, what a son is for his father; and the woman experienced the joy of being a daughter, protected by a very high love, because she felt that she had in herself something of the wonderful man who loved her, with innocence and angelical ardour, in the beautiful meadows in Eden!

Later, in the sequence of commands that God, smiling, gave to His beloved children, there comes what Adam himself, gifted by Grace with an intelligence inferior only to God’s, decreed speaking of his wife and of every woman through Eve, a decree of the thought of God, which was clearly reflected by the spotless mirror of Adam’s spirit, a flower in thought and in word: “Man will leave his father and his mother and will join himself to his wife and they will become one body”.

If there had not been the three pillars of the three above mentioned loves, could there have been love for one’s neighbour? No. It could not have existed. The love of God makes God a friend and teaches love. He who does not love God, Who is good, cannot certainly love his neighbour who in most cases is faulty. If there had been no conjugal love and paternity in the world, there could have been no neighbours, because a neighbour is the son of man. Are you convinced?»

«Yes, Master. I had not thought of that.»

«It is difficult indeed to go back to the sources. Man has been stuck in mud for thousands of years, and those sources are so high up on the summits! The first one, above all, is a source that comes immense from an immense height: God… But I will take you by the hand and lead you to the sources. I know where they are…»

196.6

«And the other loves?» ask together Simon Zealot and the man from Endor.

«The first one of the second series is the love for our neighbour. In actual fact it is the fourth in power. Then comes the love for science. Finally the love for work.»

«Is that all?»

«That is all.»

«But there are many more loves!» exclaims Judas of Kerioth.

«There are other hungers. But it is not love. They are the negation of love. They deny God, they deny man. It cannot be love because it is negation and Negation is Hatred.»

• Bible - Book of Genesis
• Family
• God's love
• Husband and wife - Husband and wife
• Love
• Love of neighbor
• Loving God
• Parents and children

There are many loves and various powers. There is the love of first power: the one given to God. Then there is the love of second power: the love of a mother or of a father, because if the previous one is entirely spiritual, this one is spiritual by two parts and carnal by one. It is true that human affection is mixed in it, but the superior sentiment prevails, because a father and mother, who are such in a wholesome and holy way, do not only feed and caress the body of their child, but they also give nourishment and love to the mind and the spirit of their creature. And what I am saying is so true, that those who devote themselves to children, even if only to educate them, end up by loving their pupils as if they were of their own flesh. (...) There is the love for one’s wife: love of third power because it is made – I am always talking of wholesome and holy love – half of spirit and half of flesh. A man, besides being the husband of his wife, is a teacher and a father to her; and a woman is an angel and a mother to her husband, besides being his wife. These are the three highest loves. (...) The first one of the second series is the love for our neighbour. In actual fact it is the fourth in power. Then comes the love for science. Finally the love for work.

• Children - Innocents
• Conditions
• Family
• God's love
• Husband and wife - Husband and wife
• Love
• Love of neighbor
• Loving God
• Parents and children
• Science - Scholars - Scientists
• Work

Aglae puts down the little bag she was carrying on her shoulder, then she kneels down at Jesus’ feet and bursts into tears. She prostrates herself on the floor, her head resting on her arms crossed on the floor.

«Do not weep thus. This is not the time for tears. You should have wept when you were hateful to God. Not now that you love Him and are loved by Him.»

But Aglae continues to weep…

«Do you not believe that it is so?»

She manages to speak through her sobs: «I love Him, it is true, as best I can… But although I know and believe that God is Bounty I cannot possibly hope to be loved by Him. I have sinned too much… Perhaps one day I will be loved… But I still have to weep so much… For the time being I am alone in my love. All alone… It is not desperate solitude of past years. It is a solitude full of longing for God, so it is no longer hopeless… but it is so sad…»

«Aglae, how little you still know the Lord! This longing for Him is the proof that God is replying to your love, that He is your friend, Who calls you, invites you and wants you. God is incapable of remaining insensitive to the desire of a creature, because He, the Lord and Creator of all creatures, excited that desire in that heart. He excited it because He loved with privileged love the soul that is now longing for Him. The desire of God always precedes the desire of the creature, because He is Most Perfect and therefore His love is by far more eager and ardent than the love of the creature.»

«But how can God love my filth?»

«Do not endeavour to understand with your intelligence. He is an abyss of mercy, which human intelligence cannot understand. But what the intelligence of man cannot understand, the intelligence of love, the love of the spirit does. It understands and confidently penetrates the mystery, which is God, and the mystery of the relationship of the soul with God. Enter, I tell you. Enter, because God wants it.»

«Oh! My Saviour! So I am really forgiven? I am really loved? Must I believe it?»

«Did I ever lie to you?»

«Oh! no, Lord! Everything You told me[1] at Hebron came true. You saved me because Your Name is salvation. You looked for me, a poor lost soul. You gave me the life of this soul, which I was carrying dead within me. You told me that if I had looked for You I would find You. And it was true. You told me that You are wherever man needs a doctor and medicine. And it is true. Everything, everything You told poor Aglae, from the words on that

morning in June, to the other words at the Clear Water…»

«So you must believe these too.»

«Yes, I believe, I do believe! But say to me: “I forgive you”!»

«I forgive you in the name of God and of Jesus.»

«Thank You…»

• Desire
• Friendship with God
• God's love
• God's mercy and forgiveness
• Jesus Christ's words to a sinner
• Loving God
• Repentance and contrition
• Tears - Crying

« (...) There is only One and True God.»

«So… He is up there, in His Olympus, all by Himself? And what does He do if He is alone?»

«He is Self-sufficient and takes care of everything in creation. I have just told you that God is also present in the buzzing of a mosquito. He does not get bored, do not worry. He is not a poor man, the master of an immense empire in which he feels he is hated and lives trembling with fear. He is Love and lives loving. His Life is continuous Love. He is Self-sufficient because He is infinite and most powerful, He is Perfection. So numerous are the things created that live because of His continuous will, that He has no time to grow weary. Tedium is the fruit of idleness and vice. In the Heaven of the True God there is neither idleness nor vice. Soon, in addition to angels which now serve Him, He will have a great crowd of just people rejoicing in Him and the crowd will grow greater and greater with the future believers in the True God. »

«Are the angels genii?» asks Lydia.

«No, they are spiritual beings like God Who created them.»

«What are genii, then?»

«As you imagine them, they are falsehood. They do not exist, as you imagine them. But owing to the instinctive need of men to search for the truth, you have also realised that man is not only flesh and that there is something immortal in his perishable body. And that is the consequence of the incentive of the soul, which is alive and present also in heathens, and suffers in them, as it is disappointed in its desires, because it is famished longing for the True God Whom it remembers in the body in which it dwells and which is guided by a pagan mind. And the same applies to towns and nations. And thus you believe, you feel the need to believe in “genii”. And thus you give yourselves an individual genius, a family, a town, a national genius. You have the “genius of Rome”, the “genius of the emperor”. And you worship them as lesser deities. Come to the true faith. You will become acquainted and friendly with your angel, whom you will venerate, but not worship. Only God is worshipped.»

• Angels
• Genie (djinn)
• God
• God's love
• Guardian angel
• The righteous
• Who is God?