If the world were able to
live out the “Our Father,” the Kingdom of God would be in the
world. But the world is unable to pray. It is unable to love.
Our
Lord explained in depth the meaning of His prayer to the mystic Maria
Valtorta on July 7, 1943.
In
the “Our Father” the perfection of prayer is found […].
In
saying it, you pray with all Paradise, during the first four
petitions; then, leaving Heaven, which is the dwelling that awaits
you, you return to the earth, remaining with your arms upraised
towards Heaven to make entreaties for your earthly needs [in the last
three petitions], and to ask for aid in the battle to be won in order
to go back up above.
“Our
Father, who art in heaven.”
Only
my love could tell you, “Say 'Our Father'.” By this expression I
publicly invested you with the sublime title of sons and daughters of
the Most High and brothers and sisters of mine. If someone [...] may
doubt that he is a child of God, created in his image and likeness,
on considering these words of mine, he can no longer doubt. The
Word of God does not err and does not lie. And the Word tells you,
“Say 'Our Father'.”
To
have a father is something sweet and a powerful aid. In the material
order, I wanted to have a father on earth to protect my existence as
a baby, as a boy, and as a young man. By this I wanted to teach you
[...] how great the moral figure of the father is. But to have a
Father of absolute perfection, as the Father in Heaven is, is the
sweetness of sweetnesses, the aid of aids. Look at this Father-God
with holy fear, but let grateful love for the Giver of life in heaven
and on earth always be stronger than fear.
“Hallowed
be thy Name.”
With
the same movement as the seraphim and all the angelic choirs [...]
repeat this exalting, grateful, and just praise to the Holy of
Holies. Repeat it while thinking of Me − I, God, the Son of God,
who, before you, pronounced it with supreme veneration and supreme
love. Repeat it in joy and in sorrow, in light and in darkness, in
peace and in war. Blessed are those children who have never doubted
the Father and at every hour and in every event have been able to say
to Him, “Blessed be thy Name!”
“Thy
kingdom come.”
This
invocation ought to be the pulsation of the pendulum of your entire
life, and everything should gravitate around this invocation of
Goodness […]. Accentuate your lives, then, with numberless appeals
for the advent of this Kingdom. But let them be living appeals −
that is, to act in life by applying your sacrifice of every hour, for
to act well means to sacrifice nature to this end.
“Thy
Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”
The
Kingdom of Heaven will belong to whoever has done the Will of the
Father […]. Here, too, you unite to all of Paradise, which does the
Will of the Father. And if the inhabitants of the Kingdom do it,
won't you do so to become, in turn, the inhabitants of Heaven? Oh,
the joy that has been prepared for you by the Triune Love of God! How
can you fail to work with a persevering will so as to conquer it?
Those
doing the Will of the Father live in God […].
Those
making the Father's Will their own, while annulling their will, know
and savor − while on earth − the Peace which is the endowment of
the blessed. Those doing the Will of the Father, while killing their
perverse and perverted will, are no longer men: they are already
spirits moved by love and living in love. You must, with good will,
tear your will out of your heart and replace it with the Will of the
Father.
After
having provided for the petitions regarding the spirit, since you are
poor, living amidst the needs of the flesh, ask Him who supplies food
to the birds of the air and clothing for the lilies of the field for
bread.
“Give
us this day our daily bread.”
I
said this day and I said bread.
I
never say anything useless.
“This
day. Ask the Father for help day by day. It is a measure of prudence,
justice, and humility.
Prudence:
if you had everything at once, you would waste a great deal. You are
eternal children and capricious, in addition […]. Furthermore, if
you had everything, you would forget God.
Justice:
Why should you have everything at once when I received help from the
Father day by day? And would it not be unjust to think that it is
well for God to give you everything together,[…]
in
the fear that God will not provide tomorrow?
Distrust
− you do not reflect on this − is a sin. God must not be
distrusted. He loves you perfectly. He is the most perfect Father. To
ask for everything at once affronts trust and offends the Father.
Humility:
having to ask day by day refreshes in your mind the concept of your
nothingness, of your condition as poor ones, and of the All and
Wealth of God.
Bread.
I said “bread” because bread is the king of foods, the one
indispensable for life. With one word and in that word I have
enclosed − so that all of you would request them − all the needs
of your stay on earth. But as the temperature of your spirituality
varies, so does the extent of the word.
'Bread
as food’
for
those who have an embryonic spirituality, to such a degree that it is
already a great deal if they are able to ask God for the food to fill
their stomachs. There are some who do not ask for it and take it with
violence […].
These
are looked upon with wrath by the Father because they trample upon
the precept from which the others come: “Love your God with all
your heart; love your neighbor as yourself.'
'Bread
as help’ in moral and material needs for those living not only for
their stomachs, but who are able to live for thought as well,
possessing a more highly-formed spirituality.
'Bread
as religion; for those who, even more highly formed, place God before
the satisfactions of sense and of human sentiment and are already
capable of spreading their wings in the supernatural.
‘Bread
as spirit, bread as sacrifice’
for
those who, once the full age of the spirit is reached, are able to
live in spirit and in truth, concerning themselves with the flesh
only to the extent that is strictly necessary to continue to exist in
mortal life, until it is time to go to God.
“Forgive
us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
There
is no one, among the number of those created, except for my Mother,
who has not had to seek the Father's forgiveness for more or less
serious sins, according to each one's capacity to be a child of God.
Ask the Father to erase you from the list of his debtors […].
But
an essential condition to receive, to be forgiven, is to forgive. If
you only seek mercy and do not grant it to your neighbor, you will
not experience God's forgiveness. God does not like the hypocritical
and the cruel, and whoever refuses to forgive his brother refuses the
Father's forgiveness for himself.
Consider,
moreover, that no matter how much you may have been wounded by your
neighbor, the wounds you have inflicted upon God are infinitely more
serious. Let this thought spur you to forgive everything, as I
forgave through my Perfection and to teach you forgiveness.
“Lead
us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
God
does not lead you into temptation. God tempts you with gifts of
Goodness alone, and to attract you to Himself. You, interpreting my
words incorrectly, think they mean that God leads you into temptation
to test you. No. The good Father who is in Heaven permits evil, but
does not create it […].
But
Evil exists. It existed from the moment Lucifer set himself up
against God. It is up to you to make Evil a Good by overcoming it and
by beseeching the Father for the strength to overcome it.
This
is what you request in the last petition. That
God may grant you enough strength to be able to withstand temptation.
Without his aid temptation would bend you, for it is cunning and
strong, and you are dull and weak. But the Father's Light illuminates
you, and the Father's Power strengthens you, and the Father's Love
protects you, so that Evil dies and you are left freed from it.
This
is what you ask for in the “Our Father” which I have taught to
you.
Observe:
no act is absent in the brevity of the formula. Faith, hope, charity,
obedience, resignation, abandonment, entreaty, contrition, and mercy
are present.
Therein
everything is comprehended; everything, understood; everything which
it is just to request and grant, requested. If the world were able to
live out the “Our Father,” the Kingdom of God would be in the
world. But the world is unable to pray. It is unable to love [...].
But
I did not give and make this prayer for the world, which has
preferred to be the kingdom of Satan. I have given and made this
prayer for those whom the Father has given to Me because they are
his, and I have made it so that they may be one with the Father and
with Me, beginning in this life, so as to reach the fullness of union
in the other.
From
The
Notebooks 1943,
Maria Valtorta, July 7, pp. 150-154.
View
my Catholic books Here.
Do we really believe that since God is love, He cannot cease to love us?
The following paragraphs are taken from Meditations for Layfolk, a book by Father Bede Jarrett, that first appeared in 1915. Devotion to the Holy Ghost was a notable feature of Father Bede Jarrett’s spirituality.
The
Holy Ghost (Love)
God’s
Love Personified
The
Third Person of the Blessed Trinity is the most mysterious. About
Him, we
seem to hear the least and to understand the most vaguely. The work
of Father
and Son, their place in the economy of the divine plan, is simple and evident,
at least in its main lines. However, of the Holy Spirit, it appears
as though
His precise purpose has not been sufficiently described to us. He is the
equal of the Father and the Son, of the same nature, power,
substance, and eternally
existent with them, participating in the same divine life, and
forming with them the ever-blessed Three-in-One. He represents to our
human point of view that wonderful mystery, the personified love that
proceeds from Father and from Son forever, and by this act completes
the perfections of God.
We
can conceive of no further addition to that being, save power,
knowledge, and
love. Yet we know also that He has His place, not only in the
interrelation (if
the word may be allowed) of the Godhead, but in the relationship (though
this phrase is certainly inaccurate) that exists between God and us. Since
God is one and indivisible, His love for us cannot be other than the
love that He has for Himself. In Him, there can be no distinction at
all. Therefore, we discover that He loves Himself and us in the love
of the Holy Ghost.
We
see His love to be nothing else than Himself—unchanging,
undying, without
shadow of alteration. Sin as we may, we cannot make God love us less.
Though we be children of wrath, He cannot help but love us, for the
gifts of God, especially the supreme gift of Himself, are without
repentance.
God’s
Love Eternal
God
cannot cease to love me. That is the most startling fact that our
doctrine reveals.
Sinner or saint, He loves and cannot help Himself. Magdalen in her sin,
Magdalen in her sainthood, was loved by God. The difference in her position
made some difference also in the effect of that love on her, but the love
was the same, since it was the Holy Spirit who is the Love of the
Father and
the Son. Whatever I do, I am loved. Then, if I sin, I am unworthy of
love? Yes, but I am unworthy always. He cannot love me for what I am,
since in that case I should compel His love and force His will by
something external to Himself.
In
fact, really, if I consider, I should find that I was not loved by
God because
I was good, but that I was good because God loved me. My improvement
does not cause God to love me, but is the effect of God loving me.
Consequently, even when I am punished by God, He cannot hate me. It is
His very love itself that drives Him (out of the very nature of its
perfection) to
punish. So, Dante spoke truly when he imagined over the portals of
Hell the
inscription: “To
rear me was the work of Immortal Power and Love.”
Each
of us is, therefore, sure that he is loved eternally
and that God’s love can
suffer no change from God’s
side.
How, then, is it that we grow evil, or lose
the familiar intercourse that we once had with Him? It is because He
has given
us the terrible power of erecting, as it were, a shield between
ourselves and
His love. He loves forever the same, but it is we who, by our sins,
have the
power to shut off that love from effecting anything good in our
souls.
God’s
Unchanging Love
As
I was deep in His love when I was a child, so also does He love
me now.
View my website Here.
