Every experience of the Spiritual Exercises somehow surprises us and is new to us, be it because of how we are in general, or the vital moment we are going through, or the person accompanying us and, above all, for that word (or those words) that the Holy Spirit of God sends to our hearts in a special and really new way. As if we were listening to him for the first time. “Our God is the same yesterday and today, Alleluia, alleluia”
Well many of them came to me in another tone, a new flavor and weight. In wanting to share fraternally some of my experience I did not know which one to choose … I will dwell on this part of Psalm 92, within the contemplation of the first week in which we humbly look at our reality of sin in the light of the Faithful and Merciful Love of God, so clear in some biblical characters … and in our lives, too.
And the only thing we can recognize deep in our hearts, is that our God is a God of profound tenderness and mercy for all his daughters and sons. Yes, for all, without exception … Our God is a “God of hopeless cases” He has come to bring us life and life in abundance, for all and especially the stray and lost sheep. That is to say that, in spite of all our unloving actions, which are not few, of so much time and patience that he dedicates to us and even of some good reprimand on his part with the affection he knows how to give us … always, he is always willing to meet us again, take us again with his loving hand so that we can return to the channel of his Love, so that we may not want to detach ourselves from Him, because He is the source of true peace, happiness, love, hope, fraternity, meaning of life … On his part nothing, absolutely nothing will separate us from the Love of Christ …, unless I allow it. But for his part, absolutely nothing will take him away from us. “He is the faithful God.” To recognize it is grace.
In that short phrase of the psalm, we have a whole program of life for those who love God. To continually and humbly acknowledge his mercy, his infinite tenderness for us, at every stage of our life, at all times and circumstances, even where we have sometimes felt lost and confused … And communicate it on his behalf to every person with whom we find ourselves on the path of our lives … And at the end of each stage, each cycle, each day, we sing his fidelity. By going through “dark nights” that are not absent in human existence, singing his fidelity that always strengthens us in faith, love and hope.
It has been a truly beautiful Advent week, to prepare our hearts for this new coming of the Lord. To recognize once again in this time the SELF OF GOD, OF JESUS, OF MARY, THAT OF CANDIDA MARIA DE JESUS, THAT OF EACH DAUGHTER OF JESUS. THAT OF EACH PERSON who in his passage through life has given us testimony of the presence of God in his existence. We feel united by the love and the grace of the same vocation. And in immediate preparation for the Provincial Congregation of América Andina 2018-2019.
Tere Ramírez F.I.
