233. Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time (B)

Meditations no. 573 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

The Lord is compassionate and merciful. Consider the goodness and love that God manifests to us throughout our lives.

Today’s liturgical texts speak to us of God’s intense merciful love for his people. The first reading, taken from the prophet Hosea, puts on the Lord’s lips this tender declaration of love: I myself (…) will lead her into the wilderness, and I will speak to her heart (…). There she will answer me as in the days of her youth, as on the day she came up out of the land of Egypt. And the responsorial psalm insists: It is he who forgives your sins, who heals your infirmities (…). The Lord is compassionate and merciful, slow to anger and rich in mercy (…). He does not treat us according to our sins, nor does he repay us according to our sins. For his part, Saint Paul uses an image that expresses in a different way the same Love that gave rise to the vocation of the Corinthians: you are a letter of Christ, written by our ministry and written not in ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not on tablets of stone, but on tablets that are hearts of flesh.

We too, who belong to the new People of God, to the holy Church, must constantly consider the goodness, mercy and love that the Lord shows us throughout life. When we take a look, in God’s presence, at the stretch of road we have already traveled, it will be easy for us to discover - even more so as the years go by - that this entire journey has been marked by God’s fidelity to his love for us and by his commitment to teach us to love. That is why he planted in our hearts a seed kindled in love, which in the course of time must become a leafy tree so that all those who deal with us can find the rest of Christ.

For a man who lives by his faith, St. Josemaría says, his life will always be the history of God’s mercies. The history of our Christian vocation in the midst of the world, the holy life of our Founder, the history of the Work, are manifestations of the Lord’s efforts for each one of us and for all humanity. Frequent consideration of so many expressions of divine mercy and goodness will help us to live full of gratitude, and will also facilitate contrition, the pain of love when we have not been able to respond generously.

Let us listen to our Father. Never waver! From now on I tell you - and I do not know your personal problems, but souls have a tremendous parallelism, even if they are different - that you have a divine vocation, that Christ Jesus has called you from eternity. Not only has he pointed his finger at you, but he has kissed you on the forehead. That is why, for me, your head shines like a star.

The story of the star also has its history. … They are those great stars that flicker at night, up there, in the heights, in the blue and dark sky, like great diamonds of fabulous clarity. That is how clear your vocation is: that of each one of you and mine. I, who am very miserable and have offended Our Lord very much, who have not known how to reciprocate and have been a coward, have to thank God for never having doubted my vocation, nor the divinity of my vocation. You should not doubt either. Otherwise, you would not be here. Thank the Lord.

We must learn to love with God’s love.

“THE LOVE of God is the health of the soul,” writes St. John of the Cross. “And when she does not have fulfilled love, she does not have fulfilled health and that is why she is sick.

Sickness is lack of health. When the soul has no degree of love, it is dead. But when it has some degree of love from God, however small, it is already alive, though weak and sick, because it has little love. The more love it has, the more health it has. When it has perfect love, it has total health.”

For those who love, the commitment to be faithful, the effort in work, the dedication to God and to others do not become a heavy burden, even if one experiences fatigue and weakness. That is why it is so important that we learn to love and that we appreciate that this has been precisely God’s greatest mercy: to teach us and make it possible for us to love with his Love.

To love with God’s love! It is something that completely exceeds the natural forces of the creature. The words of St. Paul that are proclaimed in the second reading of the Mass convey to us an attitude of profound humility in the face of this goal, unattainable without the help of grace: this trust, the Apostle writes, we have through Christ before God. It is not that for us we are capable of thinking something as our own, but that our capacity comes from God.

We understand that divine grace will carry out this work in our souls, because only the action of the Holy Spirit can cause the seed received in the heart to germinate and develop, so that it may become capable of loving everyone: God, in the first place; the Virgin and Saint Joseph; all the saints in Heaven, among whom is our Father; the Church and the Work; the Pope, the Father, our brothers and sisters, each person. … The panorama that our charity must embrace is so immense that it is logical that we should feel the need to pray to the Lord: he expands my heart to make it great, broad, open, generous. … , apt to repent and to serve others.

Many years ago, contemplating the work that God was doing in the world through Opus Dei, our Father wrote, full of gratitude: the virtue of grace expanded this poor heart of mine - dilatasti cor meum, Domine, dilatasti cor meum! (cf. Is 60:5) - it made it great to love him, to love the Holy Church, the Pope, my daughters and sons, all souls. Truly, the Lord expanded my heart, making it capable of loving, of repenting, of serving, even in spite of my mistakes. He raised the same prayer to Heaven at the end of his life, when-on the occasion of his golden jubilee as a priest-he wrote to us: let us give thanks, daughters and sons, because since we are so little-nothing-Our Father in Heaven, in his infinite goodness, has expanded our hearts and, with that fire that he came to bring to earth, has kindled in our souls a great Love.

Our talents and abilities come from God. And the Lord expects us to respond to his grace, that in this learning of love our initiative, our ingenuity, will be manifested, as happens among those who truly love each other, who are constantly looking for new ways of expressing their affection. There is no other way, St. Josemaría tells us, if we want to be consistent with the divine life that, through Baptism, God has given birth to in our souls. Progress is progress in holiness; regression is refusing the normal development of Christian life. Because the fire of God’s love needs to be fed, to grow every day, taking root in the soul; and the fire is kept alive by burning new things. Therefore, if it does not become greater, it is on the way to being extinguished.

In this learning, our model is Jesus Christ and, with him and under him, the Virgin and the saints who precede us on the path to Heaven.

THE GOSPEL is full of the Lord’s delicacies with those who follow him. He is our model in everything, beginning with love. St. Mark, in the Gospel text of today’s Mass, takes up Jesus’ answer when he was asked why his disciples, unlike those of John and the Pharisees, did not fast: Can the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them? During the time when they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. With this image, he wants to emphasize above all the joy that comes from his coming into the world. And that joy that he desires for his own is inseparable from the love that must preside over our lives.

We must go to the school of the Heart of Christ to learn the manifestations of authentic love: his compassion for the pain of creatures, as in the case of the widow of Naím or for the misery of lepers; his mercy for sinners; his concern for relieving the material needs of those who followed him. “We have all things in Christ; all things are Christ for us. If you want to heal your wounds,” explains St. Ambrose, “he is a physician. If you are burning with fever, he is a spring. If you are oppressed by iniquity, he is justice. If you are in need of help, he is strength. If you fear death, he is life. If you desire heaven, he is the way. If you seek refuge in darkness, he is light. If you want food, he is food.”

Jesus also knows how to reciprocate friendship with friendship, and he entertains himself in his conversations in the house of Bethany, with Lazarus, Mary and Martha. How delicately he responds to a scribe who, after approaching perhaps with a lack of rectitude of intention, yields to the force of his words; he says to her: you are not far from the Kingdom of God. Or the conversation with the woman caught in flagrant sin: woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “None, Lord,” she answered. Jesus said to her: “Neither do I condemn you; go and from now on sin no more.”

Jesus’ affection for men and women embraces the whole scope of his life up to the moment of his redemptive death on the Cross. Saint John has expressed in writing the immensity of that love: having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. That is why we need to contemplate the Master, to share his life, to compare it with ours in the intimacy of prayer. And so, in the school of Jesus, we will learn to love as he has loved us.

In one of his encyclicals, Benedict XVI points out that “life is like a journey through the sea of history, often dark and stormy, a journey in which we scrutinize the stars that show us the route. The true stars of our lives are the people who have known how to live uprightly. They are lights of hope. Jesus Christ is certainly the Light par excellence, the Sun that shines on all the darkness of history. But in order to reach Him we also need lights close to us, people who give light of Christ, thus offering guidance for our journey. And who better than Mary could be a star of hope for us, she who with her yes opened the door of our world to God himself; She who became the living Ark of the Covenant, in which God became flesh, became one of us, pitched her tent among us (cf. Jn 1:14)?”

Among the holy souls who show us the way to Heaven, we are especially accompanied and guided by our beloved Founder. At the end of our prayer today, we turn to him to teach us to constantly open the door of our hearts to God’s love.