Ave Maria Meditations
Be consoled and cast off your doubts, for I tell you in the Lord that your will is united with the will of God. A person who does not love God does not pay any attention to God, does not feel afraid of not loving Him, and never troubles to think of God with the sincere desire to love Him. Moreover, if the thought or idea of God sometimes comes into this person’s mind, you will find that person dismissing the idea at once or almost at once.
Console yourself, I repeat, that as long as you are afraid that you do not love God and as long as you fear to offend Him, you already love Him and no longer offend Him….
Tell me, is it the sun or is it darkness that lights up and discloses things? I leave it to yourself to draw the true conclusion. God alone is His grace, God alone is the supreme sun and all others are nothing, or if they are anything, it is due to Him alone. God alone I say, can enlighten the soul with His grace and show that soul what it is. And the more fully a person knows his own wretchedness and unworthiness in God’s sight, the more remarkable is the grace that enlightens him and reveals to him what he is.
I understand that the discovery of one’s own wretchedness under the action of this divine sun saddens and distresses at the outset. It is a source of pain and of terror for the poor soul that is enlightened in this manner. But console yourself in our most sweet Lord, for when this divine sun will have warmed the earth of your soul with its burning rays, it will cause new plants to spring up which in due course will yield most delicious fruits, the like of which have never been seen.
St. Padre Pio
