Faithful to the One who teaches us to love without measure
Our God is a God without measure. His justice is mercy and it defies our human logic based on the most worthy.
“All these years I have slaved for you and never once disobeyed any orders of yours, yet you never offered me so much as a kid for me to celebrate with my friends … But, for this son of yours, when he comes back after swallowing up your property – he and his loose women – you kill the calf we had been fattening.” (Luke 15:29-30) The heart of the father in this parable is an inexhaustible source of love for each of his sons, where they can quench their thirst, at any time, regardless of worthiness. For him, as with Saint Augustine and Saint Bernard: “The measure of love is to love without measure.” God asks us to believe in the abundance of His spring offering the water of Life and to return and draw from it without fear.
Saint Joseph’s faith in this boundless love was so great that he married Mary and became a father to Jesus, without yielding to the human laws that would have justified his abandoning this young woman who was carrying a child that was not his. He also learned to love without measure, to give up his reputation and his security in order to accompany God’s gift to the world, Jesus, who had come to transform our wandering and our desperation into abundant Life.
If Brother André continually points us toward Saint Joseph, it is because he knows that Saint Joseph can show us the path of merciful justice, which is much different from punitive justice. To give and forgive from a “heart that understands suffering” and not on the basis of worthiness … That is how God accepts us and that is how we are called to accept and treat others.
