58 — “I AM IN THE FATHER”

Presence of God. — Grant me, O Jesus, to penetrate the intimate dispositions of Your Soul, in continual personal union with the Father.

Meditation

1 — What interests us most in Jesus is His intimate dispositions toward God, His relations with Him. Jesus is the Son of God: here is all His greatness, His holiness. He is the only Son of God by nature; but in His image and through His mediation, we are children of God by grace. He has communicated to us by grace that divine sonship which belongs to Him alone by nature; therefore, in imitation of Him, all our greatness and our holiness consist in living fully as children of God. We must therefore seek to reproduce in ourselves, as far as is possible to our condition as creatures, Jesus’ interior attitude toward the heavenly Father.

First of all we find an attitude or, better, a state of intimate union; Jesus affirms: “The Father is in Me and I am in the Father” (Jn. 10, 38). He says this as Word: here we have the substantial, incommunicable union of the Word with the Father, which no one can ever imitate. But He says it also as man: for as such all His affection is concentrated in the Father and dominated by the Father, all His mind attends to Him, seeking to please Him. This union of Jesus with the divine Father is model for ours, precisely because, even in Him, it is a union of grace. Grace in Jesus is “infinite,” as theologians like to say, and for this it differs from ours; yet even the grace we possess makes us capable of living with our mind turned toward the Father and with affection concentrated in Him. Jesus gives us this example and invokes this intimate union for us: “As You, Father, are in Me and I in You, may they also be one in Us” (Jn. 17, 21).

2 — Jesus’ Soul is totally immersed in the Most Holy Trinity; His human intellect enjoys the beatific vision, and in this vision sees God whose nature He Himself possesses: He knows the Person of the Word as the subject of all His human activity, sees the Father of whom He feels Himself Son, sees the Holy Spirit who dwells in Him; and in His Heart there is a created charity of immense measure, like the grace that adorns His Soul, and this charity rises unceasingly, with swiftest movement, toward the heavenly Father so as then to pour itself out on our souls. Jesus works in Nazareth’s workshop, passes through the roads of Palestine, preaches, instructs, debates with the Pharisees or heals the sick, converses with the crowds attending to all, and meanwhile, in the depths of His Soul, this marvelous life of union with the divine Persons continues to unfold.

By grace our soul is made temple of the Trinity: the three divine Persons are really present in us and offer and give themselves to us to be known, loved, and initially possessed beginning even in this earthly life. Through faith we can know Them, through charity we can love Them, and we can live in union with Them. Precisely to make us capable of this life of intimate union with God, Jesus merited and continually dispenses to us grace and charity in a measure and perfection infinitely inferior, but of identical nature to the grace and charity that inundate His Soul. And while Jesus, by the beatific vision, sees God face to face, we know Him by faith, but as He is.

Thus we too can participate in Christ’s interior life, wholly immersed in the Trinity, according to St. Paul’s word: “your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3, 3), and with St. Teresa Margaret we can aspire to imitate by faith, as far as is possible to a creature, “the most intimate and hidden operations of the intellect and will, that is, the sublime cognitions and affections of Jesus Christ’s most holy Humanity, hypostatically united to the Word” (Sp. p. 374).

Colloquy

O Jesus, what an immense treasure is hidden in Your words: “As You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, may they also be one in Us”! No, You are not content that in imitating You we stop at the external part of Your life, but You want more; You want that, as far as is possible to our state as simple creatures, we seek to imitate even Your interior life, Your intimate relations with the Father, Your unceasing union with Him. If You had not said it, merely thinking of it would be madness and proud rashness; but You have said it, indeed these words of Yours are particularly sacred since they form part of Your last prayer to the Father, a prayer in which Your spiritual testament is enclosed.

You, God-Man, indissolubly united to the Father by nature, and I always united to God by grace; Your Most Holy Soul always immersed in the beatific vision of the Most Holy Trinity, and I by faith know that the Trinity lives in me; in Your Heart an infinite love of charity, under the motion of the Holy Spirit, rises continually to the Father, and in me the flame of charity, lit and diffused by the divine Paraclete, waits only to grow, develop, be taken by the Holy Spirit and drawn into His flame of love to rise to the Father, rise to the Most Holy Trinity.

By Your grace, O Jesus, I can live in You, and You live in me. But I do not live only in You, for where You are, O Word, there are also the Father and the Holy Spirit. Thus You, O Christ, bring me to live in the Trinity, and my poor human life remains hidden with You in God. O Lord, do not permit me to be so absorbed by affairs and external activities, however good, as to forget and neglect this marvelous life of union with God to which You call and invite me. In the secret of my heart, hidden from every human gaze, the Trinity lives in me: oh, may I know how to live with Them! May I know how to be silent, recollect myself, hide myself with God hidden in me! May I, as a true child, know how to live always in union with my Father: always at His feet to love, to adore, to listen to His divine word.