Daily Meditation: Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Sacrifices - only those made in the name of fraternal love please God

05/03/2016

How many monks, ascetics or even simple believers have willingly inflicted all sorts of torments on themselves… ‘to please God’, they say! As if God took pleasure in seeing a human creature wounded and bleeding. All but a few religions encouraged this type of practice, and some still do today. But it is time to understand that the Lord does not need human suffering. The age of flagellation, torment and martyrdom is over. Mistreating and mutilating one’s body and risking one’s life – these ways of sacrificing oneself to the Divine are unproductive. True sacrifice lies in fraternal, disinterested love for all humans. Those who have understood the meaning and power of love do not need to inflict suffering on themselves: they will have plenty of that, sharing the suffering of all those who are unhappy! And the obstacles they will meet in their efforts to help them will provide even more opportunities for suffering. But faced with this suffering, they must not recoil: it is what will make them greater and nobler.