Thursday, May 5th

Few living today understand the meaning and the joy and the reward of love. Most people in the Western hemisphere regard it superficially, at its lowest erotically and at its highest concern for those in need, combined with a willingness to buy food and shelter for the dispossessed and starving.

This is not the calibre of loving which the Father seeks in the hearts and minds of the children He has created. First of all, to love is to receive love - from the Father who created both the person and the faculty for loving. Then the child of the Father (that is every soul who ever lived or ever will) must react in loving response to the Author and Giver and Sustainer of the loving faculty: children know and do this with all the naturalness of the young and innocent.

And as the faculty to love grows it must learn to give, so will it grow and develop. As the faculty is exercised so it will envelop all with which it comes into contact in the animate world and especially in the human area.

And as the faculty for loving grows so will the capacity for suffering. So it must be in a free but fallen world. And the suffering, borne in union with My crucified and risen life brings each soul travelling along the way into the very heart of eternal life even now, in the time of his humanity, for it a sharing in the redemption of the world and the saving of slothful and wayward souls along the way.