Lectio divina

Lectio divina

Heart of Jesus

The spirit of faith leads us directly to God, and persuades us of the need to live a life of union with Him. Jesus said precisely that we are given to know God through this spirit of faith: "No one knows the Father except the Son and except the one to whom the Son has chosen to reveal him".

This great faith is needed to penetrate the Heart of Jesus, in the intimacy of this heart, to find not a diminished Jesus, but to find him in the fullness of his love, in the magnificence of his love. We must penetrate deeper than the spear of Longinus, to understand this unknown light..

Whether the world accepts it or not: God is the master and the master. Our duty is to follow him. To serve God is to reign... But to serve God is more than to reign.

What does it mean to reign? To govern creatures, means to do work that leaves us with all our miseries. But to serve the Lord is to become masters of his Heart, it is to possess it with faith. We receive this grace to the extent that we progress in the spirit of faith, in the desire to see God and to see only Him! Whoever is penetrated by this light needs nothing. There comes a moment when he rests in God, almost seeing Him: and then the rest: suffering, sacrifices, persecutions, are nothing but trifles. But where and how does Jesus teach us to know God? In intimate life with Him. In prayer: that is why ignorant souls, according to the world, know more about this subject than the wise.
(Fr. Matteo Crawlej in the book: Incontro al Re di amore)

The quote is a bit long. But I did it on purpose, both for the competence of the pious author and for the crystalline transparency of the statements. Living in the spirit of faith, therefore, is to live seeing God in everything, both in what is pleasing and in what is repugnant.

Seeing God in everything is to live guided by God, illuminated by his light, comforted by his love, attracted by his power, supported and refreshed by his sufferings endured for us, desiring only to see, to know and therefore to love, and therefore to be always united with Jesus love.

Having the spirit of faith therefore means:

1. Often meditating on the truths of faith and returning often and with pleasure to the meditation of such truths.
   
   
2. Judge all events in accordance with faith, and instead of dwelling on secondary causes, see in them the first cause which is God, who directs them all for his glory, for our salvation, making them serve to punish some or to purify and sanctify others.
   
   
3. Desire only those things which faith teaches us to be good, that is, those which can lead us to our end. What good is this for eternity?
   
   
4. Fear only that which faith makes us regard as dangerous, that is, such as can easily lead us away from our ultimate end; for example, everything which exposes us to some temptation.
   
   
5. Always speak in accordance with the language of Jesus in the Holy Gospel, condemning what He condemns and approving what He approves.
   
   
6. Operate and act in everything in accordance with the teachings of faith for reasons which it gives us, and thus sanctify actions which in themselves would be indifferent and material, such as food and recreation, by offering them to God.

All this with the intention of removing from our lives all that superficiality, that lightness.

In short, faith guides us not to live vain appearances for ourselves. Only Jesus always, who is the only reality! There are indeed difficulties and many ones; And with this? There are three kinds of truths of faith. Some truths are pleasing to our spirit, not only because God has revealed them and the Holy Church proposes them to us to believe, but also because they meet our tastes so that we can penetrate them well, understand them easily and because they are in conformity with our inclinations. In general, they are all consoling truths and in a particular way the certainty of divine mercy and the reward of Paradise.

Not all of them, however, are consoling. In fact, some are terrifying. For example, an eternal hell for the punishment of obstinate sinners is a bitter, painful, terrible truth that we would not like to believe, and we believe it not willingly at all, but only by virtue of the word of God. The spirit of faith must persuade us to always believe revealed truths regardless of our feelings of taste or disgust. We must believe the lovely truths and the terrible ones by the authority of God's word: this is the true faith, the spirit of faith.

Other truths of faith are easily understood and appreciated; both by our imagination and by our intelligence; and there are others entirely opposite and in no way graspable. Among the first we understand well how Jesus was born in Bethlehem, had to flee to Egypt, how he was crucified; among the latter we do not mean the truth of the Most Holy Trinity and the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. These latter truths are certainly real, but so made that our imagination cannot conceive of them, because we can in no way imagine how such truths exist; nevertheless our intellect firmly and simply believes it, on the sole assurance which the word of God gives it. This is the spirit of faith that the saints practiced, taught even amid spiritual sterility, the dryness of the soul.

And finally, one can have and preserve the spirit of faith by living the truth and in the truth, not the lie and in the lie. One lives the truth and in the truth by living grace and in divine grace and following its impulses.

He who lives in nature according to the operations of nature lives in falsehood. Our imagination, our senses, our feelings, our taste, our consolations, our speeches can be deceived and deceiving; to live according to these things is to live by a lie, or at least in a continual danger of lying; But to live in the truth is to live in the spirit of faith.

Let us ask ourselves; because faith is little, weak, deficient. Because we pray little, or not well. The nourishment of faith is humble, trusting, persevering prayer.