GRM 209.6-7 · Volume 3
The Gospel as revealed to me
Quotation
«In this land of Judaea, still near Bethlehem of Naomi, I remind you that love relieves pain and gives joy. Consider, you who are weeping, Naomi’s desolation when her house was left without men. Listen to the words of her down-hearted dismissal of Orpah and Ruth: “Go back, each of you, to her mother’s house. May the Lord be kind to you as you have been to those who have died and to me…”. Listen to her weary insistence. She who once had been the beautiful Naomi and now was the tragic Naomi, crushed by grief, did not hope for anything else in life. She only wished to go and die in the place where she had been happy in the days of her youth with the love of her husband and the kisses of her children. She said: “Go, go. It is useless to come with me… I am as good as dead… My life is no longer here, but there, in the next world, where they are. Do not sacrifice your lives any longer beside a dying thing. Because I really am ‘a thing’. I am indifferent to everything. God has taken everything away from me… I am bitter grief. And I would grieve you… and that would weigh sorely on my heart. And the Lord would ask me to account for that, He Who has already struck me so hard, because it would be selfishness to keep you, alive, near me, dead. Go to your mothers…”. But Ruth stayed to support the sorrowful old woman.
Ruth had understood that there are sorrows which are always greater than one’s own and that her grief of a young widow was lighter than the woman’s who had lost her husband and two sons; as the grief of an orphan boy, who is compelled to live begging, without caresses, without good advice, is by far greater than the deep sorrow of a mother bereft of her children; likewise the keen regret of him who, for a number of reasons, goes as far as to hate mankind and see in every man an enemy whom he must fear and against whom he must defend himself, is even greater than other sorrows, because it involves not only flesh, blood and mentality, but the soul with its supernatural duties and rights and drives it to perdition. How many childless mothers there are in the world for motherless children! How many childless widows there are who could be compassionate towards solitary old aged people! How many there are, who, having been deprived of every love so that they may devote themselves entirely to the unhappy, could fight hatred with their need to love and thus give love to unhappy Mankind, which suffers more and more because it hates more and more!
209.7
Sorrow is a cross, but it is also a wing. Mourning divests to reclothe. Rise, you who are weeping! Open your eyes, get rid of nightmares, of darkness, of selfishness! Look… The world is the barren land where one weeps and dies. And the world shouts: “help” through the mouths of orphans, of sick, lonely, doubtful people, through the mouths of those who are made prisoners of hatred by treason or cruelty. Go among those who are shouting. Forget yourselves among those who are forgotten! Recover your health among those who are sick! Be hopeful among those who are despairing! The world is open to those willing to serve God in their neighbour and to gain Heaven: to be united to God and to those whom we mourn. The gymnasium is here. The triumph there. Come. Imitate Ruth in all your sorrows. Say with her: “I will be with you until I die”. And even if those misfortunes, which consider themselves incurable, should reply to you: “Do not call me Naomi, call me Mara, for God has marred me bitterly” you must persist. And I solemnly tell you that those misfortunes one day, because of your persisting, will exclaim: “Blessed be the Lord Who relieved me of my bitterness, desolation and solitude, by means of a creature who knew how to make his sorrow bear good fruit. May God bless him because he is my saviour”.
Remember that Ruth’s kindness to Naomi gave the Messiah to the world, because the Messiah descends from David, as David descended from Jesse, Jesse from Obed, Obed from Boaz, Boaz from Salmon, Salmon from Nahshon, Nahshon from Amminadab, Amminadab from Ram, Ram from Hezron, Hezron from Perez, and they populated the fields of Bethlehem preparing the ancestors of the Lord. Every good deed is the origin of great things, which you do not even imagine. And the effort man makes against his own selfishness can cause such a wave of love, capable of rising higher and higher, supporting in its limpidity him who caused it, until it lifts him to the feet of the altar, to the heart of God.
May God grant you peace.»
Annotation
It's in this land of Judea, still close to Naomi's Bethlehem, that I remind you how love relieves pain and brings joy. Cf. the Book of Ruth, chapter 1, 1-22.
Book of Ruth 1, 1-22
Rt 1, 1-22 : In the days when the Judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. A man from Bethlehem of Judah went with his wife and two sons to sojourn in the fields of Moab. The man's name was Elimelech, his wife's name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahalon and Cheljon; they were Ephrathites from Bethlehem of Judah. They went to the fields of Moab, and settled there.
When Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died, she was left alone with her two sons. They took Moabite wives, one named Orpha and the other Ruth, and lived there for about ten years. Mahalon and Cheljon also both died, and the woman was left without her two sons and her husband. Then she and her daughters-in-law arose and left the fields of Moab, for she had heard in the countryside of Moab that Yahweh had visited his people and given them bread. So she went out from the place where she had settled, with her two daughters-in-law, and they set out to return to the land of Judah. Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law: "Go, return each to her mother's house. May Yahweh show kindness to you, as you did to those who died and to me! May Yahweh make you each find rest in the house of a husband!" And she kissed them. They raised their voices and wept, and said to her, "No; we will return with you to your people." Naomi said, "Return, my daughters; why should you come with me? Do I still have sons in my womb who can become your husbands? Go back, my daughters, go. I'm too old to remarry. And when I say: I have hope; when I would be this very night to a husband and would bear sons, would you wait for that until they were grown up? would you refrain for that from remarrying? No, my daughters. It is very bitter to me because of you, that Yahweh's hand has fallen upon me." And, raising their voices, they wept again. Then Orpha kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.
Naomi said to Ruth, "Behold, your sister-in-law has returned to her people and to her god; return with your sister-in-law." Ruth replied, "Don't press me to leave you by returning away from you. Where you go, I will go; where you dwell, I will dwell; your people will be my people, and your God will be my God; where you die, I will die and be buried there. May Yahweh deal with me in all his severity, if anything but death separates me from you!" Seeing that Ruth was determined to go with her, Naomi ceased her entreaties.
The two of them set off until they reached Bethlehem. When they entered Bethlehem, the whole town was moved by them, and the women said, "Is this Naomi? "20She said to them, "Don't call me Naomi; call me Marah, for the Almighty has filled me with bitterness I went away with full hands, and Yahweh is bringing me back empty-handed. Why would you call me Naomi, after Yahweh has testified against me and the Almighty has afflicted me?"
So Naomi returned, and with her her daughter-in-law, Ruth the Moabitess, who had arrived from the fields of Moab. They arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.