Dear Father,

I am truly experiencing God as the Foundation of my life.

Waking up, the first thought of my morning is to Him; every evening before bed I take the right amount of time to pray. 

I go through my day with renewed optimism, thinking about the Beauty of Creation and to the Omnipotence of the Lord.

I never feel alone, I know God is with me.

I am, Father, beginning to experience along with confusion, a form of Happiness, different from the others. 

I feel it is important to talk of God also to the non-believers.

The priest´s answer

Dear friend, 
1. I was reading your mail in the late afternoon yesterday, after  having talked about The dwelling of God in our soul: this Inhabitation is a presence different from the one that in theology is defined as the presence of immensity. 

2. By presence of immensity we mean the presence of God in all the creatures, as He nurtures and perfectly knows them, and from Him they receive all they have.
The presence of immensity is already referred to in the Old Testament: “Where can I hide from your spirit? From your presence, where can I flee? If I ascend to the heavens, you are there; if I lie down in Sheol, you are there too (Psalm 139,7-8).
And it is the same one St. Paul referred to when he spoke to a gathering of Stoic and Epicurean philosophers in the Areopagus in Athens: “The God who made the world and all that is in it…he is not far from each of us.
For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17,24. 27-28).

3. In your email you mention the enchantment felt by this presence of immensity, because everything speaks of the power of the Father, the wisdom of the Son and the goodness of the Holy Spirit.
Of the power of the Father: because everything subsists by his will.
Of the wisdom of the Son: because everything was made according to his most wise design, of which human science grasps only something, almost as a shadow of reality.
Of the goodness of the Holy Spirit because all material realities do not even know they exist but exist as God’s gift to us, as a reflection of his goodness.


.

4. We read of a saint walking by country fields and water streams, among the many animals, the chirping of birds and the flowering trees felt himself dying of love and said, “Be silent, be silent because my heart is bursting.”
All people should see in every work of creation an echo of God’s love for each of us.
The beautiful expressions of the Italian poet Metastasio are well known: “Wheresoever I look about, immense God I see You; I admire you in your handiwork, and recognize you in myself.”

5. But alongside this presence of God, which theologians call the “presence of immensity,” there is another far greater and more precious one: it is the personal, and not merely moral, presence of God in a person’s heart.
It is already hinted at in the Old Testament where it is stated that “wisdom (God) does not enter a soul that works evil nor dwells in a body enslaved to sin” (Wis. 1:4).
Very explicitly our Lord speaks of it at the Last Supper when he says, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” (John. 14:23).

6. All words must be weighed one by one.
Jesus speaks of a personal presence and not just an emotional and moral one.
Indeed, of a stable presence because he says, “we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.”
It is a presence linked to the state of grace because Jesus premised, “Whoever loves me will keep my word,”
Now it is proper for friends, as Aristotle wrote centuries ago, to have the same will and dislike.
We are the Lord´s friends  if we are in agreement with his commandments, if we love them and keep them willingly.
It is therefore a presence related to the state of grace.
And it is a presence that fails if one does not keep his word with grave sin.

7. St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, when she was a postulant at the Carmel of Dijon, in France, confided to a colleague that she felt the personal presence of God in her heart.
She feared, however, to state to others such a great fact, and asked her confessor to enlighten her about the consistency of this presence.
Her confessor was the Dominican Father Vallé. As soon as he confirmed to her the reality of that presence, immediately, like an arrow, Elizabeth  plunged into God, wishing only that the Dominican would stop speaking so as not to disturb her conversation with God.

8. St. John insists on this personal presence of God linked to charity, to the state of grace.
In his letters he writes, “God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him.” (1 John 4:16).
And again, “if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us.This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us, that he has given us of his Spirit”(1 John. 4:12-13).

9. You also try to experience this communion, in the persuasion that God is present in your soul in grace.
St. Bernard said that we sense this presence by the motion of the heart.
At the same time feel yourself in the heart of God, contained in God as in a womb; feel yourself enveloped in the various mysteries of Christ’s life, especially when you contemplate them in the rosary.It is an experience of heaven. When you begin to live it, you would not want to divest yourself of it.

10. Writes St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, who died in 1906 at the age of 26: “My continual occupation is to re-enter the inner self and lose myself in Those who dwell there… I feel Him so alive in my soul. I have only to recollect myself to find Him within me, and that is my whole happiness.” (t.n.) (Letter to Canon Angles, July 15, 1903); ”I have found on earth my heaven; for heaven is God, and God is in my soul. The day I understood it, everything for me became illuminated; I would like to reveal this secret to all those I love, so that they too may always adhere to God and thus Christ’s prayer may be fulfilled: Father, may they be perfect in unity.” (t.n.)(Letter to Mrs. De Sourdon, 1902).

I wish you and our visitors to reach this summit of Christian life,
For this I bless you and remember you in prayer.
Father Angelo

Questo articolo è disponibile anche in: Italian Spanish Portuguese