30 — BELIEVE IN LOVE

December 26

Presence of God. — O sweetest Child Jesus, let me penetrate the abyss of Your infinite love, so that I may know how to believe in it with all my strength.

Meditation

1 — In creation God loved us to the point of making man in His image and likeness; in redemption He loved us to the point of making Himself in our image! Christmas is par excellence the feast of love, and of love that reveals itself not in the sufferings of the Cross, but in the lovableness of a little Child, our God, who stretches out His arms to us so as to make us understand that He loves us.

If consideration of infinite justice can move us to greater fidelity in God’s service, how much more does consideration of His infinite love move us! St. Teresa of the Child Jesus said: “My nature is such that fear makes me retreat; with love, instead, I not only go forward, but I fly” (St. 8).

And Jesus, the Child-God, is here among us precisely to change the old law of fear into the new one of love.

To run in the way of God’s commandments, our souls need to be enlarged in the conviction of God’s infinite charity for us; and precisely for this purpose we want to immerse ourselves in contemplation of the Christmas mystery. In fact, when we see Jesus, the eternal Word, become for us a Child and, from the first instant of His earthly life, fully embrace our miseries, to the point of having as cradle only a manger, as bed a little hay, as covering poor swaddling cloths... oh, we can no longer doubt His love. God loves us! Jesus loves us! Yes, let us repeat it and repeat it without end: “We have known and believed in the charity God has for us” (1 Jn. 4, 16). Lord, I believe in Your love for me! Lord, increase my faith.

2 — “God is charity!” The treasure enclosed in this word is immense, and it is the treasure that God opens and reveals to the soul that concentrates itself wholly in contemplation of the Incarnate Word. As long as one does not understand that God is infinite love, infinite benevolence that gives itself and extends to all men and women to communicate to them His good and His happiness, spiritual life remains in bud; it has not yet developed, it is not yet deep. Only when the soul, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, penetrates the mystery of divine charity, does its spiritual life become full and mature.

We cannot understand our God’s infinite love better than by drawing near the poor manger where He lies, made flesh for us. “The divine virtues and attributes are discovered in God through the mysteries of the God-Man,” teaches St. John of the Cross (cf. C. 37, 2), and among these attributes the first is always that of charity, which constitutes the very divine being. From loving and silent contemplation of the Child Jesus there easily arises in us a very deep and penetrating sense of His infinite love: it is not only to believe, it is in a certain way to experience that God loves us. Then the will fully accepts what faith teaches it; it accepts it with love, with all its strength, and the soul throws itself totally into believing in infinite love. God is charity: this truth, foundational for all Christian life, has penetrated deeply into the soul; it feels it, it lives it, because it has, so to speak, almost touched it in its Incarnate God. Whoever thus believes in Infinite Love will know how to give himself to it without measure: to give himself totally.

Colloquy

Lord, I believe in Your love for me! How could I still doubt?

“You descended from the great height of Your divinity to the mire of our humanity, because the lowliness of my intellect could neither understand nor gaze upon Your height. So that with my littleness I might see Your greatness, You made Yourself a little child, enclosing the greatness of Your Deity in the smallness of our humanity. And thus You manifested Yourself to us in the Incarnate Word Your Son; thus I have known You, abyss of charity! Be ashamed, be ashamed, blind creature, so exalted and honored by your God, of not knowing that God, by His inestimable charity, descended from the height of Deity down to the lowliness of the mire of your humanity. O inestimable love, O inestimable love, what do you say to this, my soul? I say to You, eternal Father, I beseech You, most benign God, that You communicate us, and all Your servants, with the fire of Your charity” (St. Catherine of Siena).

O God, how much I need to know Your infinite love! To know in order to believe, to believe in order to love, to love in order to give myself totally to You, without reserve, just as You gave Yourself entirely to me.

How I would like, O my God, to repay Your gift! But You, who are All, have given me all, while I, who am nothing, can give You only nothing! And yet how slow, sluggish, and stingy I am in giving You this nothing, how I try to spare myself, to give myself with measure and prudence... Oh, Your love has known no measure, did not calculate the infinite distance between Creator and creature, but surpassed and filled this distance, uniting indissolubly human nature with the divine Person of the Word! How true it is that love knows no obstacles and overcomes all, adapts itself to all, provided it reaches its goal! O sweet Child Jesus, my God, my Savior, grant me to understand more and more the greatness and depth of Your love; let me penetrate this boundless abyss whose bottom no creature will ever be able to touch! As I enter more deeply into it, I feel in me a new strength, a new impulse that pushes me irresistibly to give myself entirely to You. You know how much I need this strength, this impulse to increase and be consolidated to make me truly generous and ready for every sacrifice, for every self-giving. O Lord, may I understand Your infinite charity, may I have in it an unshakable faith, and then may I never refuse anything to Your love: this is the gift I ask You at Your Nativity!