281. Thirteenth Tuesday of Ordinary Time
Meditations no. 265 (unofficial computer-aided translation)
Weathering the storms of the interior life.
At that time, Jesus got into a boat, and his disciples followed him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep.
Like the disciples, we have received from God the gift of being in Jesus Christâs boat. If we stay with him, we will reach the end of our journey, the happiness of heaven. But on our voyage through this present life, storms can arise: moments of darkness, turbulence, and trial; or, still more frequently, times when we have to change direction, because we have started to go off-course.
I know that your optimism receives a boost from past and present evidence every time you meditate, and help other people to meditate, on the passage in Holy Scripture that shows us Christ asleep, tired out. Ipse vero dormiebat (but he was asleep). But God doesnât fall asleep. Cor meum vigilat (my heart is awake), he tells us. Christâs heart, and the most sweet heart of our Mother, are always watchful. If I were only to tell you about some of the storms in the past, my children!
For people immersed in God, things are only as important as we choose to make them. If we are souls of prayer, we will accord a very relative importance to what happens on this earth, just as the saints did, because they were anchored on the firm rock which is Christ Jesus.
I was saying that we have to be with Christ in the boat, with Christ, who seems to be asleep. And his disciples went and woke him saying, âSave us, Lord; we are perishing.â My children, when God grants us the light to see our mistakes, in our interior struggle, and when there are difficulties and misunderstandings in the apostolate, we have to go to him as the Apostles did, saying, Domine, salva nos! (Save us, Lord!) But letâs not exaggerate. He saved us by the Redemption, and he saved us once and for all.
We should be going to our Lord in any case, many times every day, wanting to keep up a constant conversation with him, to thank him and atone to him for the many offences he suffers. We should look for him all the more, then, when we encounter some setback. But we shouldnât exaggerate these things, as I say, because everyone has difficulties - with our relations, sometimes those closest to us; with a friend, or a neighbour, or those who hate seeing us working so effectively in the service of the Church.
Why are you afraid, O men of little faith? Do you see? He told us before that faith moves mountains, and now he is asking us to be bold and daring. With faith, with the strength of faith, we arenât afraid of anyone or anything; not even of God himself, because he is our Father. For us, nothing, absolutely nothing, can go wrong. As long as we are trying to be faithful, although we make mistakes, although we have to say sorry âseventy times sevenâ times every day, we have Christâs strength behind us. He is what lasts. Everything else just makes a good story, itâs all transitory.
No child of mine should ever lose this certainty, or the gaudium cum pace, the joy and peace and serenity that comes of it. Not even on seeing your personal failings, however big they are, as long as you go to Confession with real contrition. Certainty: because we have Godâs light and Godâs strength: quia tu es, Deus, fortitudo mea, for you, O God, are my strength.
Serenity: because we donât want to mistreat our Lord but to serve him as his good children, with love.
In the fraternal chat, the Work provides us with a sure way of keeping our lives heading towards God.
There may come a time when the cry bursts forth from our souls: Save us, Lord, we are perishing! And Jesus Christ will restore light and peace to our heart by means of our brothers or sisters, through the ordinary means that are part of our spirit: sacramental Confession and the confidence. Itâs good for you to know this sound teaching: oneâs own mind is a bad adviser, a poor pilot, to steer the soul in the storms and tempests, among the reefs of the interior life.
That is why it is Godâs Will that the command of the ship be entrusted to a Master so that, with his light and knowledge, he can guide us to a safe harbour.
We need a good pilot who can guide our spiritual life with a sure hand. Hence we have the fraternal chat, which is one of the means Christ uses to ensure that our life stays on course towards God. The Confidence is a sincere personal conversation which one has periodically with the local Director, or with someone appointed by the Directors, in order to become more identified with the spirit of the Work and to improve oneâs apostolate. The fraternal chat is an enormously effective help that the Work gives us to keep us safely on board Christâs boat, fishing for souls in the seas of the world. And we should always make sure that it is as natural, simple and spontaneous as the conversations the Apostles had with our Lord as they travelled with him along the roads of Palestine.
Be sincere and simple, our Father often said. Mention the things that cause you tiredness, suffering or worry, or that destroy your peace of mind. If you open your heart, our Lord illuminates it with his grace, and enriches it with the vital, operative power of the Holy Spirit. And he added: Be truthful, be simple, be clear, be objective. Seeing the disease is not a disaster, but a great step forward on the road to health.
The first disciples set us a good example of simplicity. Jesus Christ was sleeping in the boat, tired out, but the Apostles needed his help, and they awoke him so that he could save them. On other occasions, they felt no shame in telling him about the things they wanted. Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Do you want us to bid fire come down from heaven and consume them? Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory. Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied. The Apostlesâ questions and requests were sometimes quite out of place or ill-considered, and reflected their defects, their earth-bound ambition, and the poor quality of their supernatural outlook; but they also expressed their patent simplicity and the great confidence they had in our Lord.
We need this sort of simplicity in order to do the fraternal chat well. Look: the Apostles, for all their evident and undeniable defects, were sincere, simple⌠transparent.
You too have evident and undeniable defects. May you not lack simplicity.
How to obtain maximum spiritual profit from the Confidence.
The Apostlesâ behaviour, the straightforward simplicity in which they approached our Lord, has to be the norm for us when we do the Confidence. Let what you say be simply âYesâ or âNoâ; anything more than this comes from evil. We will speak simply and naturally, opening our hearts wide with absolute confidence and, if necessary, with brutal frankness. If we do this, we will obtain the most effective help for our perseverance and spiritual progress, because, as St Gregory the Great says, we can have no better defence than truthfulness.
You donât do the Confidence out of friendship, or any other personal motives, but out of supernatural motives: whoever it is who receives your Confidence, it is your Father himself who is receiving it. Only if we do it like that will we receive the maximum spiritual and supernatural benefit from it, because our hearts will be disposed to accept the advice as if it were coming from our Lord Jesus Christ himself.
Afterwards we have to engrave deeply on our minds the advice we have received, and struggle to put it into practice, with real interest and good will, convinced that that is what God wants. All the energy we put into doing so will be effort well spent, since we can be certain of the results. You have the experience, as I do, our Founder wrote, that after doing the Confidence well we are left cum gaudio et pace, with joy and peace, ready to work zealously and serenely. In the Confidence our Lord gives us the light to see - and learn - what we must do in order to behave well⌠in a given case, in each of the highly individual sets of circumstances that we will meet along our way.
New lights! -What joy you have because God has made you discover a new Mediterranean!
-Make the most of those moments: nowâs the time to break into a hymn of thanksgiving: and itâs also the time to clean up odd corners of your soul, to get out of some rut, to act more supernaturally, to avoid giving possible scandal to your neighbourâŚ
-In a word: let your gratitude show itself in a concrete resolution.
Our Lady, full of grace, made the deepest feelings of her soul manifest in the Magnificat. We ask her to obtain great faith and supernatural outlook for us from God, so that we can always do the fraternal chat in full simplicity and sincerity.