God Wants to Love Us As We Are
God can only love you the way you are because that is the way He wants you to be. The more you conform to God's will, the more you’ll take delight in it, and you’ll find your sweetness in what you have. The more you think you have to be something else, the more distasteful God will be to you, and you’ll look for your pleasure somewhere else. You can see how this false conscience is the cancer of your soul.
Say you have a bad temper and try to change it, and since God wants you to be humiliated by your temper, you find out that you can't change it. Then you get depressed and think God doesn't love you because you have a bad temper. The danger with this kind of thinking is that it looks so pious; it looks like you want to please God. But you really want to please yourself.
You should not only turn away from your bad habits, but you should turn to the joy of God's love here and now. Otherwise, you would be turning away to your idea that God is loving you now. It is not the idea; it is God. If you meditate on the actuality that God is loving you now, little by little all other thoughts will be drawn away, because this actuality is what you want more than anything else. And then you’ll be drawn up into God.
Also, this way is related to our natural desires. Food and sex are natural pleasures, you're naturally attracted to them. When you turn to the joy that God is loving you now, you become conformed to God; your natural conformity to God is realized. The more that conformity grows, the greater also is your charity. Nothing is more important than to meditate on the reality that God is loving you now. The only impediment would be that you don't believe it.
When you really believe that God loves you, you avoid the two errors of pride and presumption. You don't justify yourself by denying your sins, nor do you try to convince yourself you're acceptable to God because of your goodness. What you do is acknowledge your sins with simplicity and go to God because you have nothing else. When you think your free will means you have to do something which doesn't come from God, everything is centered on yourself and you’ll probably end up in some type of despair.
"Come over to Me, all ye who are burdened."(Mt. 11:28) What are you burdened by except your sins? When He says, "Come over to me," that means those sins are not impediments to His love. "Charity sees no evil."(l Cor 13:5) We always think this means someone else, but you should see no evil in yourself, because of the reality of God in you. The evil is there, but in comparison to one drop of Christ's blood, it is nothing! So, you see, it is more important than anything else to recognize your false conscience by which you would think that you had to overcome your sins just in order to go to God.
Say you have a bad temper and try to change it, and since God wants you to be humiliated by your temper, you find out that you can't change it. Then you get depressed and think God doesn't love you because you have a bad temper. The danger with this kind of thinking is that it looks so pious; it looks like you want to please God. But you really want to please yourself.
You should not only turn away from your bad habits, but you should turn to the joy of God's love here and now. Otherwise, you would be turning away to your idea that God is loving you now. It is not the idea; it is God. If you meditate on the actuality that God is loving you now, little by little all other thoughts will be drawn away, because this actuality is what you want more than anything else. And then you’ll be drawn up into God.
Also, this way is related to our natural desires. Food and sex are natural pleasures, you're naturally attracted to them. When you turn to the joy that God is loving you now, you become conformed to God; your natural conformity to God is realized. The more that conformity grows, the greater also is your charity. Nothing is more important than to meditate on the reality that God is loving you now. The only impediment would be that you don't believe it.
When you really believe that God loves you, you avoid the two errors of pride and presumption. You don't justify yourself by denying your sins, nor do you try to convince yourself you're acceptable to God because of your goodness. What you do is acknowledge your sins with simplicity and go to God because you have nothing else. When you think your free will means you have to do something which doesn't come from God, everything is centered on yourself and you’ll probably end up in some type of despair.
"Come over to Me, all ye who are burdened."(Mt. 11:28) What are you burdened by except your sins? When He says, "Come over to me," that means those sins are not impediments to His love. "Charity sees no evil."(l Cor 13:5) We always think this means someone else, but you should see no evil in yourself, because of the reality of God in you. The evil is there, but in comparison to one drop of Christ's blood, it is nothing! So, you see, it is more important than anything else to recognize your false conscience by which you would think that you had to overcome your sins just in order to go to God.