The mystery of the love of God the Father

What exactly is this "mystery of God", this plan established by the Father's will, a plan that Christ has revealed to us? In his letter to the Ephesians, Saint Paul wishes to pay a solemn homage to the Father by describing the grandiose plan of his love, a plan which is carried out in the present, but which has its remote origin in the past: «Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He blessed us in the heavens filling us with every spiritual blessing, in the name of Christ. For in him he elected us before the foundation of the world, that we might be saints and immaculate in his eyes. He predestined us in his love to become his children of adoption for the merits of Jesus Christ, according to the approval of his will. In order to celebrate the glory of grace, of which he gave us in his beloved Son, whose blood earned us the redemption and remission of sins. He lavished his grace on us, superabundant in wisdom and prudence, to make known to us the mystery of his will, the plan that he had conceived of bringing together in the orderly fullness of the times in Christ all things, those that are in the heavens and those who are on earth ».

In the momentum of his gratitude, St. Paul emphasizes the two essential aspects of the work of salvation: everything comes from the Father and everything is concentrated in Christ. The Father is at the origin and Christ is at the center; but if, due to the fact of being at the center, Christ is destined to unite everything within himself, this happens because the whole plan of redemption has come out of a paternal heart, and in this paternal heart there is the explanation of everything.

The whole destiny of the world was commanded by this fundamental will of the Father: he wanted to have us as children in Jesus Christ. From all eternity his love was aimed at the Son, that Son whom St. Paul calls with such a suggestive name: "he who is loved", or rather, to render more precisely the nuance of the Greek verb: "he who is been perfectly loved ». To better understand the strength of this love, it is necessary to remember that the eternal Father exists only as Father, that his whole person consists in being Father. A human father was a person before he became a father; his authorship is added to his quality as a human being and to enrich his personality; therefore a man has a human heart before having a paternal heart, and it is in mature age that he learns to be a father, acquiring his disposition of mind. On the other hand, in the divine Trinity the Father is Father from the beginning and distinguishes himself from the person of the Son precisely because he is Father. He is therefore the Father entirely, in an infinite fullness of fatherhood; he has no other personality than the paternal one and his heart never existed but as a paternal heart. It is with all of himself, therefore, that he turns to the Son to love him, in a momentum in which his whole person is deeply committed. The Father does not want to be but a glance for the Son, a gift to the Son and union with him. And this love, let us remember it, and so strong and so extraordinary, so absolute in the gift, that merging with the mutual love of the Son eternally constitutes the person of the Holy Spirit. Now, it is precisely in his love for the Son that the Father wanted to introduce, insert, his love for men. His first idea was to extend to us the paternity he possessed with regard to the Word, his only Son; that is, he wanted that, living on the life of his Son, put on him and be transformed into him, we would also be his children.

He, who was Father only before the Word, also wanted to be essentially Father towards us, so that his love for us would be one with the eternal love that he devoted to the Son. So all the intensity and energy of that love poured out on men, and we were surrounded by the fervor of the momentum of his paternal heart. We instantly became the object of an infinitely rich love, full of concern and generosity, full of strength and tenderness. From the moment in which between himself and the Son the Father gave rise to the image of humanity united in Christ, he bound himself to us forever in his paternal heart and can no longer take his gaze from the Son away from us. He could not have made us penetrate more deeply into his thought and heart, nor have he given us greater value in his eyes than by looking at us only through his beloved Son.

The early Christians understood what a great privilege it was to be able to turn to God as a Father; and great was the enthusiasm that accompanied their cry: "Abba, Father! ». But how can we not evoke another enthusiasm, the previous one, that is divine enthusiasm! One hardly dares to express in human terms and with earthly images that first cry which was added to the richness of the Trinitarian life, with an overflow of divine joy towards the outside, that cry of the Father: «My children! My children in my Son! ». In fact, the Father was the first to rejoice, to rejoice in the new paternity he wanted to inspire; and the joy of the first Christians was only the echo of his heavenly joy, an echo that, although vibrant, was still only a very feeble response to the Father's primordial intention to be our Father.

Faced with that completely new paternal gaze that contemplated men in Christ, humanity did not form an indistinct whole, as if the love of the Father were simply addressed to men in general. Undoubtedly that gaze embraced all the history of the world and all the work of salvation, but it also stopped on every man in particular. St. Paul tells us that in that primordial gaze the Father "chose us". His love aimed at each of us personally; he rested, in a certain way, on each man to make him, individually, a son. The choice does not indicate here that the Father took some to exclude others, because this choice concerned all men, but it means that the Father considered each in his own personal characteristics and had a particular love for each, distinct from the love he addressed to others . From that moment on, his paternal heart gave to each one with a predilection full of concern, which adapted to the different individualities he wanted to create. Each was chosen by him as if he were the only one, with the same ardor of love, as if he were not surrounded by a multitude of companions. And each time the choice proceeded from the depths of unfathomable love.

Of course, this choice was completely free and addressed to each one not by virtue of his future merits, but because of the pure generosity of the Father. The Father owed nothing to anyone; he was the author of everything, the one who made a still non-existent humanity rise before his eyes. St. Paul insists that the Father has formulated his grandiose plan according to his own approval, according to his own free will. He took inspiration only in himself and his decision depended only on him. All the more impressive, therefore, is his decision to make us his children, binding himself definitively to us with an irrevocable paternal love. When we speak of the approval of a sovereign, it implies a freedom that can even degenerate into play and indulge in fantasies that others pay for without any harm to themselves. In his absolute sovereignty the Father did not use his power as a joke; in his free intention, he committed his paternal heart. His approval made him consist in total benevolence, in being pleased with his creatures by giving them the position of children; just as he wanted to place his omnipotence solely in his love.

it was he who gave himself the reason to love us to the fullest, as he wanted to choose us "in Christ". A choice made in consideration of individual human persons as such would have only that value that the Father, creating it, would recognize to every human being for the fact of his dignity as a person. But a choice that considers Christ every time receives an infinitely higher value. The Father chooses each as he would choose Christ, his only Son; and it is wonderful to think that, looking at us, he first sees his Son in us and that in this way he has looked at us, from the beginning, before calling us to exist, and that he will not cease to look at us. We have been chosen and continue at every moment to be chosen by that paternal gaze which voluntarily associates us with Christ.

This is the reason why that initial and definitive choice translates into a profusion of benefits, the outpouring of which St. Paul seems to want to express with an ever-richer expression. The Father lavished his grace on us and filled us with his riches, because Christ, in whom he was now contemplating us, justified all the liberalities. To become children in that one Son it was necessary that we share the greatness of his divine life. From the moment the Father wanted to see us in his Son and choose us in him, everything he had given to that Son was also given to us: therefore his generosity could not have had. limits. In the first glance at us the Father therefore wanted to endow us with a superhuman splendor, prepare a luminous destiny, intimately associate us with his divine happiness, establishing since then all the wonders that grace would have produced in our soul and all the joys that the glory of immortal life would bring us. In this dazzling wealth, of which he wanted to clothe us, we first appeared in his eyes: wealth of children, which is a reflection and communication of his wealth as a Father, and which, on the other hand, was reduced to a alone, which surpassed and summed up all the other benefits: the wealth of possessing the Father, who has become "our Father" the greatest gift we have received and can receive: the very person of the Father in all his love. His paternal heart will never be taken away from us: it is our first and supreme possession.