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1 Maccabees 3:18-19-21
Jesus says:
“I have told you over and over again - and tell you once more today, the day of Christ’s manifestation12 - that when God is with you, all the forces of Earth joined together are like smoke dispersed by a mighty wind.
“Power is not in weapons or in the number of those armed. Power is in the portion which God has with Himself. God is where there is honesty in life, love for the Lord, and the justice of uprightness.
“It is vain to hope that God will be present where sins surpass that limit which my Mercy accepts because it remembers having been Man and having undergone the assaults of the Enemy, overcoming them because it was One with the Will of the Father, which does not want man to be lost, but to overcome so as to be saved. God is not present where, in the name of overbearance, abuse and arrogance are permitted. God is not present where there is no love for Him, and there is no love where there is sinful living and a lack of charity towards one’s neighbor.
“Do not lie by saying, ‘I love God, but cannot love my neighbor because he has done this or that to me.’ No. You do not love.
“If you fed on charity to the point of making it your flesh and blood, you could not distinguish and separate, and you would move without impairment from the sublime love offered to God to the holy love offered to your neighbor. If Charity were alive in you, like a divine cloak you would cover over the wretchedness of your brothers and sisters and have them appear as lesser copies of God, whose children they are, as you are. If you made Charity your life, you would be blessed in loving those who do not love you, knowing that in this way you would reach perfect love, which does not act in the hope of recompense from those receiving it, but believing with absolute faith that the Good One takes note of your affections and will turn them into eternal riches for you when you enter into the Kingdom.
“And what did I do, and what do I do in your regard? Do I love those who love Me? No, I love with a painful love even those who offend Me. I loved you before you existed, though knowing the offenses you would commit against Me, and if I feel a heavenly predilection for those who love Me because they, in their love for Me, are the comfort of my heart, for you that strike Me I superabound in Mercy, and as if from an inexhaustible fount I shower upon you the wave of love to call you to Myself, to save you for Myself, to give you that joy which you can find only in Me, hoping to penetrate you and soften your hardness and make you good, O children who have cost Me so much and who do not want to believe in Me.
“Do not refuse my hand reaching out to you, which experienced the agony of being pierced, but which suffers much more over being rejected than over being pierced. The piercing would have been sweet for Me if I had known that salvation would come from it. The numberless wounds would have been caresses; the thorns, kisses; and the cross, an embrace - if my all-seeing thought had known that from my Sacrifice there would come redemption for the whole human race. It now falls, wearied by its weight of mercy, which I cannot pour out.
“I am given gold by the prayers of the saints and incense by the holocaust of the victims, but the myrrh, the most bitter myrrh is given to Me by you that do not love Me and make Me savor once more the chalice of Gethsemane and the sponge of Calvary with your lack of love. Most precious are the gold and the incense laid down at my feet, which willingly ran to death for your sake. But little, little, too little respect for the heaps of myrrh with which the Earth is covered and from the top of which Satan is laughing, mocking Me, whom he regards as defeated by the uselessness of the sacrifice.
“But I am not defeated. The defeated will always and exclusively be the servants of Satan. My saved ones and I shall be eternally victorious, and from our peaceful, shining, everlasting glory we shall see those cast down by the holy and awesome Name - which is mine - disappearing into eternal Death.
“Children who still love Me, do not be afraid. I am the Savior. And you that, without hating Me, are unable to love, rouse yourselves and come to Me. I call you around my sign. Come. Believe. Purify yourselves, set yourselves aflame, hope. Terrify your spiritual enemies and your material enemies with the sword of love.”
12 Matthew 2:1-12. January 6 is the Catholic Feast of the Epiphany, “Manifestation” of the Lord.