Divo Barsotti
Do you remember the prayer of St. John of the Cross?
“Mine are the heavens and mine is the earth. Mine are the nations, the just are mine and mine the sinners. The angels are mine, and the Mother of God, and all things are mine; and God himself is mine and for me, because Christ is mine and all for me.”
If we possess God, with God and in God all things will be given to us, but only in God. God cannot be added to a good that we consider greater; no, God’s choice is an absolute choice for all those who want to be Christians. You cannot put God and things together, because things are finite, while God is infinite. In God, however, there is everything that God wants there to be, therefore, this also includes his children. If you pretend to live a relationship of love with his children that is added to the love of God, you do not save the children and you do not even experience union with God. It is in God alone that we find everything, even down here on earth, more so after the present life. In the present life, we may be convinced that we possess something independently of God, but this is not true, because what we possess independently of God, not only is not good, but destroys us. How often the love of wealth or power destroys man! Those who tend to wealth as their end, who tend to power as their end are all destroyed. They are already destroyed. Better to be nothing down here on earth, better to be beggars like Saint Giuseppe Benedetto Labre, than to be presidents of the republic or ministers of state and no longer possess God.
Remember this. Nothing can be added to the possession of God. God is the only one. If you believe that you can add something to God, you do not possess either things or God. If you believe that you possess things, these things that you possess already destroy you. It is wealth, which becomes idolorum servitus; it is power, which contaminates you and prevents you from freeing yourself from that sordid egoism in which man lives only his damnation.
The divine vocation that implies a choice of God, for you is a choice that you can only live in realizing the greatest commandment:
“Hear Israel: the Lord is our God! The Lord is one.” One, not two. We realize this unity of God through total love. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind,” then, “You will love your neighbor as yourself.”
In the Old Testament, the command of love of neighbor was not united with the first commandment, in Christianity it was. And this is because we cannot truly love God or neighbor. It is impossible to love God and it is impossible to love one’s neighbor sincerely, because the act of man cannot reach God who is infinite. Humanly speaking, our love cannot even reach our neighbor, because sin has divided us. But we love God and we love our neighbor in Christ the Lord. In Christ, God made himself accessible to our love and we love him; in Christ, our neighbor also became accessible because in his death on the cross he caused himself to be in solidarity with all humanity. Therefore, only in Christ do we love God and neighbor. It is no longer possible to divide the love of God from the love of neighbor, because God and all men are one: Christ Jesus, in him is realized that unity of creation with God and of God with creation that sin had compromised. He assumed everything, he raised everything to the Father and he saved everything.
May the Lord grant us the grace to understand what it means to have been called and to have received a Christian vocation, to live it in a response of total love to the one who has chosen us from eternity, so that we may find in him the full realization of our our existence.
(From “Che Dio vi parli,” Chorabooks 2016, translated by Aurelio Porfiri. Image: KELLEPICS at pixabay.com)
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