Ave Maria Meditations
The self-giving of Christ constitutes a pressing call for correspondence with that love: love is repaid with love. Man was created in the image and likeness of God. And God is Love. Therefore the heart of mean is made for love and he more he loves, the more he becomes identified with God; only when he loves can he become happy. And God wishes us to be happy, here on earth too. Man cannot live without love.
Personal holiness is not centered in the fight against sin but in love for Christ who shows Himself to us as being truly human, fully aware of everything about us. The love of God for me and of men for God is a love of mutual friendship. \And one of the specific characteristics of friendship is relationship. In order to love Our Lord it is necessary to know Him , to speak to Him. We get to know Him by meditation on His life in the Holy Gospels. In them He shows Himself to us as being endearingly human and very close to our life. We meet Him in prayer and in the Sacraments, especially in the Blessed Eucharist.
Meditation on the Most Sacred Humanity of Our Lord, especially when we read the Gospel and when we consider the Mysteries of the Rosary, constantly nourishes our love of God and constitutes a living teaching as to how we have to sanctify our day.
In His hidden life, Jesus wished to descend to the most common things of human existence, to the daily life of a manual worker who supports a family. And so we see Him during almost the whole of His life working day after day, caring for His tools in the small workshop, dealing simply and in a friendly way with the neighbors who came to ask Him to make a table for them or a rafter for a new hours, caring for His mother with great affections. That is how He fulfilled the will of His Father god during those thirty years. When we look as His life, we learn to sanctify our own work , our family, our friendships. Everything that is truly human can be holy, can be a channel for our love of God, because Our Lord on assuming our human nature, sanctified it.
Genuine Love. The Will of God.
Knowing that God loves us with an infinite love is the good news that gives joy and meaning to our lives…the greatest proof of correspondence (to this love) is fidelity, loyalty, the unconditional adherence to the Will of God. I this regard Jesus teaches us by showing his infinite desire to do the Will of His Father, telling us that His food is to do the Will of Him who sent Him.
Love for God does not consist in sensible feelings, although these too may be given to us by Our Lord so as to help us to be more generous. It consists essentially in the full identification of our will with that of God. The is why she should ask ourselves frequently: Am I doing what I ought to be doing at this moment? Do I offer my activity to God on starting it and during its accomplishment? Do I rectify my intention when vanity and the thought of what people will say tend to intervene? Do I try to do my work with human perfection? Am I a constant source of joy for those who live or work with me? Does my daily presence among them draw them closer to God?
Love is repaid with love, but it must be a genuine love, which is seen in specific ways in the fulfillment of our duties towards God and towards others, even when our feelings do not incline us in this direction, and it may be for us an uphill struggle. The highest perfection consists not in interior favors or in great raptures, wrote St. Teresa, but in the bringing of our wills so closely into conformity with the Will of God that, as soon as we realize that he wills anything, we desire it ourselves with all our might.
Love should continue to survive even when there is total dryness, if Our Lord should permit this to happen. In general, it is on occasions like this that our relationship with Our Lord is purified and strengthened.
Fr. Francis Fernandez
