Jesus and mankind

PRESENCE OF GOD - O Jesus, teach me to love others as You love them.

MEDITATION

1. The sacred soul of Jesus always remains in closest union with the Blessed Trinity and therefore in the most profound contemplation, yet He is ever mindful of the needs of mankind. It was for men that Jesus came—to save them and bring them to the Father; and He gives Himself to them with the utmost solicitude and abandon. The same charity which unites Jesus to His Father descends through the Father upon the men whom Jesus loves so tenderly. He wills to redeem them all because they belong to the Father, to whose image and likeness they were created. In a most touching manner Jesus expressed His tender love for men comparing Himself to the Good Shepherd: “I am the Good Shepherd; and I know Mine, and Mine know Me. As the Father knoweth Me and I know the Father: and I lay down My life for My sheep” (Jn 10,14.15). Jesus likens His union with us to the union He enjoys with His Father, the terms of comparison being knowledge and love. Certainly it is only a simple similitude and yet Jesus delights to speak of it. He sees and knows the Father in the splendor of His glory, but He also sees and knows each one of us in the reality of our poverty, sorrows, and longings. He loves the Father, and gives Himself totally for His glory, and at the same time He loves each one of us and gives Himself wholly for our salvation; or rather Jesus sees and knows us only in the Father and in relation to Him. This is the very reason for His love and for everything He has done for us; His infinite love for the Father has made Him the Good Shepherd who gives His life for His sheep.

2. Our love and contemplation of God, our desire for intimate union with Him, should not make us strangers to our brethren, should not lessen our sensitivity to their needs and sufferings; it should not prevent us from giving ourselves to them with true supernatural charity, as far as our state in life permits. No state of life, even the most contemplative, can excuse us from the duty and necessity of caring for our neighbor : if external works are reduced to a minimum, we must devote ourselves to our neighbor by prayer and apostolic immolation.

When love for God is genuine and intense, it does not confine the soul within itself, but in one way or another it always leads it to embrace all those who belong to God because they are His creatures, His children, and the object of His love.

Although Jesus was God, He did not hold Himself aloof from men. He willed to feel and experience all their needs, even their temptations, “ without sin” (Heb 4,15). He shared with them a life of privation, fatigue, painful poverty, and suffering. Therefore, if we wish to attain to an effective fraternal charity, we must feel the sorrows, the poverty, and the material and spiritual needs of our neighbor; we must feel these in order to sympathize with him, help him, and even share in his trials. We must sacrifice ourselves, our ease and comfort, in order to give ourselves to others. We shall be able to do this only if our love for our neighbor resembles the love of Jesus, that is, if it springs from our love of God. Only one who loves others for the love of God will have that strong, persevering, fraternal charity which never fails.

COLLOQUY

O Jesus, why am I not moved by Your solicitude and tender love for us, Your poor creatures? You enjoy the uninterrupted vision of the Most Holy Trinity, finding in it all Your beatitude and glory, but you do not will that this glory and beatitude should be exclusively Yours; You want to give us a share in it. O Jesus, I see You sharing our poor human life of misery and suffering, so that, making Yourself like to us in sorrow, we might be made like to You in glory.

Men have not understood You; they have not returned Your love...they have crucified You. Yet You still love them because Your love is not for Your own personal satisfaction, but only for the glory of the Blessed Trinity. O Jesus, out of love for Your Father You have loved us to the point of sacrificing Yourself entirely for us; grant that, out of love for You and for Your glory, I may know how to love my brethren and to give myself to them most generously.

“ O my Jesus, how great is the love that Thou hast for the children of men! The greatest service that we can render Thee is to leave Thee for love of them and for their advantage. By doing this, we possess Thee the more completely; for, although the will has less satisfaction in the enjoyment of Thee, the soul is glad that Thou art pleased, and sees that, while we live in this mortal life, earthly joys are unsure, even though they seem to be bestowed by Thee, unless they are accompanied by the love of our neighbor. He who loves not his neighbor, loves not Thee, my Lord; for in all the Blood Thou didst shed, we see the exceeding great love which Thou bearest for the children of Adam ” (T.J. Exc, 2).

O Jesus, grant that like You I may live in continual union with God and at the same time give myself to my neighbor. May I lead a life of continual recollection, prayer, and contemplation, yet a life wholly devoted to the service of others.