Fr. John-Mary: Father, in the last program, you told us about the unity which exists between Jesus and the Father, about the closeness which exists between them. But for us, Jesus, as God, often seems very far away. Because of his authority, we are often afraid of God, the all-powerful one. Could you talk about this problem?

Fr. M.D. Philippe: I believe that what you say it is true, and I have emphasized it in the beginning of these talks. Because of the atheist ideologies, we confuse authority and power, and I should say that we confuse the Father with the Roman pater familias, who has all authority over life and death. God has all authority, but it is an authority of love, and it is this love that he has revealed to us in the first covenant. Scripture speaks of Yahweh God as the one who has all authority, Yahweh the God of armies. The mystery of Jesus is the mystery of the Beloved Son; I was almost going to say: it is Yahweh who disarmed his Son at the Cross, who accepted at the Cross to be visibly conquered. The devil is present at the cross, and he considers himself as victorious, because he has opted for the power alone. He doesn't have any authority, and he no longer has any love, but he wants to dominate; and Jesus, who came to show us who the Father is in his deepest sense, who the Father is as a source, shows us what Love is. In the rigorous sense, between the Father, there isn't any exercise of authority. Authority appears in the mystery of the incarnation, it appears secondarily. It is an authority which is entirely assumed by love, and which therefore is quite different from what we ourselves figure out: it is a service of love, which allows us to go to the very end in spite of our fragility, in spite of our weaknesses. I believe that we must really understand this. Last time, I did not have the time to explain it, but I wanted to say it. As a matter of fact, even without your question, I would have come to this point. The more we understand the unity which exists between Jesus and his Father, the more we explore it, the more we contemplate the love of Jesus for his Father, the more we ought to discover how much Jesus is close to us, how much he is thrilled at all that is ours. His love assumed our sensitivity, our whole affection: our sensitivity is not a stranger to the heart of Jesus. It is for that reason that I love so much this passage of the Gospel of St. John, where Jesus is in the presence of the suffering of Martha and Mary at Bethany because Lazarus has just died, he has been dead for 4 days. Jesus was absent but in reality Jesus was present, in another way, an invisible one. He was indeed carrying the suffering of Martha and Mary; and when he sees Mary crying, he cries, and his heart is wounded by the wound of Mary's heart. It is as if these tears of Mary's heart were the most effective prayer, the one which most touches the heart of Jesus; before performing his miracle and saying this very powerful word: "Lazarus, come forth", Jesus cries. Seeing the one who was once a cadaver come to the call of Christ, must have been something extraordinary from the human, emotional point of view. There must have been a very strange emotion in the heart of Martha and in the heart of Mary. Jesus, just before performing this miracle, addresses himself to the Father in an amazing way: "Father, thank you for having heard me; I know that you always answer me, but it is because of the crowd - the crowd is us - which surrounds me, that I have spoken to you, so that they might believe that it is you who have sent me. Having said this, he cried out in a strong voice: 'Lazarus, come forth'. The dead man appeared, his hands and his feet tied with bandages, and his face was enveloped with a shroud. Jesus said to them: 'untie him, and let him go". It is marvelous, to see this absolute trust of Jesus coming from his unity with the Father. Jesus knows that all that he will ask his Father, his Father will give him. Being so close to Mary and to Martha, he nevertheless does not want to complete this miracle "to the very end", which would have been to rid Lazarus of all his bandages and of the shroud in which he was tied. Jesus will do it for himself, for his Resurrection, but he did not do it for Lazarus. Even though Lazarus is resurrected, he remains in his human condition, while Jesus after his own resurrection will not be any longer part of this world. It is for that reason that nobody removed the bandages from the face of Christ and that the shroud remained in its initial form. Here, Jesus asks Martha and Mary to remove the bandages: this is very touching. They are the ones who had put them on Lazarus, they are therefore the ones who ought to remove them. Jesus respects this human way of expressing love and I believe that it is one more sign of his tenderness which shows how much he is close to us, and how much he doesn't suppress anything of our human condition. The more Jesus loves the Father in this fullness of love which arises from what the Beloved Son is, the more he is close to us, and the more he grasps us from the inside. This is already characteristic of human love: human love respects all that is unique in the other person, in the friend. When we truly love persons, we love them as they are. We do not try to change them; true, we will try to help them to develop, so that they become more and more themselves, but we are not going to impose on them what we ourselves think, because we respect what they are. Jesus loves us with such a love that he respects us as we are. He wants to purify our heart so that we learn how to love; he wants to purify us from all our pride, from all our vanity, from all our unpurified desires and immediate pleasures which always tend to prevent human love from reaching its deepest level. Jesus wants to purify us; he corrects us while purifying us, so that we might become more and more ourselves. This is maybe what is very astonishing in his love for us, which is very marvelous, and which sometimes surprises us the most: we would sometimes prefer that, from the very fact that Jesus loves us, he might change us, even exteriorly. No, not at all, it is a profound interior work, a divine love which works on us from the inside. Jesus really wants to recreate in our heart what is greatest in it. He who is the Beloved Son of the Father is the one who is the adorer, who recognizes that the Father is the Creator. He wants to adore in the deepest and strongest sense, for he knows that, because of our pride, we have much trouble adoring, recognizing our total dependence towards God, towards our Creator. When we look at our Creator, we look at his omnipotence, we look at his authority and then we are afraid. Sin has made Adam afraid of God, and as soon as he heard the steps of God, as shown in this very simple and very modest language of Genesis, he ran away. Basically, we are always like that: we are afraid of God, and, well, we run away. Yet, if our attitude were right, as soon as we came into the presence of God, we would adore him and recognize that adoration, far from diminishing our heart, widens it and liberates it. True liberation comes from the mystery of adoration. God, while teaching us to adore and himself has wanted to adore in Jesus, frees us from ourselves. He makes us understand that, because our soul is created directly by God, we resemble God more than our own parents. And that is very important especially with regard to some of the conditioning which irritates today's young people: that of self-centered parents, or of parents who exercise their authority in an unwise way. Through adoration, we discover that we are very close to our Creator and are in the hands of God. Jesus wanted to teach us, in his way, this mystery of adoration.
Fr. John-Mary: This adoration remains quite mysterious to us. How do we adore? What is adoration?

Fr. M.D. Philippe: That's right, and I will look at two moments when Jesus teaches us what adoration is. First of all, when Jesus is in the desert, the devil tells him: "you have only to adore me", suggesting to him that, from that moment, he would have everything. It is very curious, it is a devil's bargaining. The devil has a very special marketing, we must never forget it, and we must understand it. He tries by every means to seduce us: by earthly goods, by promising us marvelous things if we adore him, if our soul adores him, if we give him the interior keys of our soul, of our will (this will by which we are free, by which we are capable of loving) and of our intelligence. This is what he wants first of all and, in today's world, he tries to seduce us in astonishing ways. He tried to seduce Jesus who replied imperatively: "you will worship only one God". Secondly, the moment when Jesus confronts the Samaritan, a woman who no longer knows what love is, whose heart is wounded. This is why she is so close to us: she is a separated sister who has not fully received Revelation, or explored its implications, one who is a sinner. The whole world looks at her, she has had five husbands. When Jesus asks her about her husband, she has the courage to tell him that she doesn't have one. Jesus says to her: "you are right". It is true that she no longer has a husband, that she no longer has anyone who loves her; and she is therefore reduced to the water duty at midday: while men relax or play, she does this duty. I believe that, while doing this duty, she was singing a little popular tune, and Jesus, beginning with her, gives her back her dignity. How can Jesus give her back her dignity since she no longer loves, or is loved by anyone? Her fifth husband no longer loves her, he cannot love her, her heart is wounded. Jesus tells her that one must adore in spirit and in truth; and that it is he, as the beloved Son of the Father, who brings this new way of adoring, a much more interior adoration. She wanted to know if it is necessary to adore on the high mountains, on the heights, or if it is necessary to adore in the Temple - a liturgical quarrel which is always current: people still ask themselves: 'should one speak Latin, should one speak English?" Jesus comes back to the essential thing: it is necessary to adore in spirit and in truth. Our soul at its deepest level is a source of spiritual life, freely adores and recognizes that it is totally dependent on God, totally dependent on Jesus, our God, and thus places itself in the hands of God. Adoration in spirit and in truth: is authentic only when we recognize our total dependence on God. It is a marvelous teaching of Christ that he who loved the Father with such great love that it took entire possession of his human heart, wanted to finish he life on earth by adoration. At the Cross, he adores, in the most powerful way possible, an adoration which implies a holocaust where he is the lamb, where he is the offered victim. It is himself, it is his heart, which is offered; his very loving, very tender heart, his heart which knows how to cry with those who cry, his heart which loves little children so much, because they are pure, because they are innocent. This heart accepts being broken to show how far the mystery of adoration goes: we have to offer everything to God knowing that if our heart is broken in God, it is in fact not eternally broken: it will live a new life. Adorers in spirit and in truth offer their own life, so that they may go even further. Adoration allows our human heart to rediscover its whole dimension, rediscover its whole freedom. Jesus teaches us adoration first of all. I insist on this because I believe that it is what today's world needs the most. If we reject the Creator in order to be liberated, we are in fact liberated in a false way: we are looking for a false autonomy, not a, true one, a psychological autonomy, in which we are conditioned and discover ourselves bound by much stronger bonds. We must rediscover today our true interior liberty, our true religious liberty, which is the gift that Jesus grants us through his adoration at the Cross. He wants us to adore with him and through him. It is by this adoration that we can discover what true prayer is. The apostles ask Jesus to teach them to pray, and we are all at that stage: if Jesus were there, we would ask him: "teach us to pray, we do not know how to pray"; only little kids know how to pray with their mother. When their mother knows how to pray; then they pray beside her. Jesus gives us the "Pater Noster", the "Our Father" which makes the prayer of Christ and our own united. That is marvelous. Jesus does not say: "Address yourselves to the Father". No, "Our Father", the Father of Jesus is our Father. By the prayer that Jesus teaches us, we are raised up to him, one with Jesus. We know that the love of the Father for his Beloved Son extends to us, and that He looks on us as his beloved children. When we pray, we are bound to our Creator, to our Father, like Jesus, in the same interiority, in the same absolute of love. It is for that reason that we can ask anything of him. "Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name'. We look at the Father, and then we say: "give us our daily bread, give us what is absolutely necessary for us". Everything interests our Father: not a hair of our head falls without our heavenly Father knowing it: this is fantastic. Some people will say, "it is exaggerated, it is metaphorical, it is symbolic". Yes, it is metaphorical, it is symbolic, this is quite obvious, but it is a deep reality, it is a divine symbol which expresses the unique love of the Father towards us. The Father loves us with an infinitely greater tenderness than the tenderness of any mother. Jesus makes us understand that all of Mary's tenderness for him arises from the tenderness of the Father for him. Therefore we can say that the Father has for us a maternal tenderness. You see how authority disappears, and that nothing remains, except this tenderness of love which envelops and carries us. It is above all through and by adoration, that we can discover our all-important truth: how near the Father is to us and how tenderly he loves us. Jesus says it with such force: "have no fear, little flock, because it pleased your Father" - therefore our Father - "to give you the kingdom." This is marvelous and we touch here something very, very great: our adoration is really adoration in spirit and in truth, when it punctuates our life, when it is the first and last act of our day, when it is done in the morning at our work, at midday, in the afternoon at our work. When we come to punctuate our life seven times a day by acts of adoration, we are living the breviary of the poor. Monks in the world, or Christians in the world, when they want to look at God, make an act of adoration, very brief, sometimes a little longer, so much the better; they try to punctuate their day by seven acts of adoration, to turn themselves to God. The fruit of adoration is to put us in this attitude of full abandonment, so that we are without fear, without any anguish.

Fr. John-Mary: There is a question that I wanted to ask you: We are called to "have no fear", and yet you speak of the gift of the Holy Spirit which is the gift of Fear.

Fr. M.D. Philippe: Yes, it is very true, but it is this divine fear which is not the policeman's fear. When we are afraid, it is the policeman's fear, especially when we go a little too fast on the highways, then we are afraid that there might be a radar. Our world is a world where we are watched everywhere; we always have an eye on the policeman who is going to penalize us: this is not the gift of fear. There is anguish in today's world. Why is there this anguish? Because we no longer adore. A man who no longer adores, is a man who will finish his life in fear and anguish. If we taught young people how to adore, and to adore God their Father, there would no longer be this fear which comes from sin, this turning in on oneself which leads to anguish. Divine abandonment is not psychological abandonment. We know very well that by psychological abandonment we conform to the craft which carries us, allowing ourselves to flow down the river. Divine abandonment is not that at all; divine abandonment is a very great determination to accomplish the will of the Father in us. And we discover this will of the Father for us, in our adoration. When we adore, this will of the Father takes hold of ourselves, and we can rest within his hands. To be in the hands of the Father is to love with this full abandonment, with this wish of being entirely his, of being for him. When we live this divine abandonment, we don't hesitate to have initiatives; psychological abandonment causes us to lose all initiative: we have our back broken, we no longer know how to stand up straight, we don't know any longer what to do; it is psychological abandonment.

Adoration gives us this divine force so that our life is finalized. We have only one desire: to accomplish fully, and to the very end, the will of the Father. At that time, we are beloved sons, and being beloved sons, we can rest in the Father, we are carried by him, we are carried by Jesus, we are presented to him by Jesus. He then establishes between our heart, his Fatherly heart, and the heart of Jesus, a filial bond, of unity, of closeness so that all the intimacy which exists between Jesus and his Father exists in our innermost heart. This is how the prayer that Jesus teaches us educates us. Clearly this goes beyond all our ordinary education, which is habitually on a psychological level. But psychology which eliminates adoration and prayer is a psychology which cannot educate us truly, for our true personality, is that of a child of God, a son or daughter of the Father.