Meditation preached by radio on April 4, 1944

While we must look to the heavens to adore our Father, in order to receive His inspiration and to strengthen us for our work and our sacrifices, this gesture cannot be the only gesture of our lives. It is of maximum importance because without Him no action of ours has any value; however, this gesture must be supplemented by yet another, also profoundly evangelical. A look toward earth filled with love and interest, to this earth so full of value, of significance that captivated the love of the eternal God, drawing God down to her to redeem and sanctify her with divine teachings, example, sufferings and death.

All the splendor that enriches heaven is created on earth. Heaven is the granary of the Father, but the most beautiful granary of the world has never added one single grain to the wheat sheaf, nor a single sheaf to the planting. Wheat grows only in the mud of this earth.

The devotion to the Heart of Christ and to the heart of Mary has as its profound meaning: to remind the sorrowful of the modern world that regardless of their sufferings there is a God who loves them, a God who is Love (cf. I Jn 4,8). When Jesus desired a symbol to represent the most deeply felt message of his soul, chose the Heart because it symbolizes love, love for them, the children of this earth. This love is no vain sentimentalism but rather a strong, vigorous sacrifice that is not hindered by thorns, lashes and the cross. And together with this Heart we are reminded that there is another heart that loves us, the heart of his mother and ours. It is this heart that accepted us as sons when it was on the point of bursting apart with pain beneath the cross at the sight of the suffering of the Heart of Jesus, her son, for us, children of earth, redeemed by the suffering of a God made man. He wished to join to his redemption the suffering of his mother and that of his faithful ones. The message of the love of Jesus and Mary urge us to love as well.

With this intention I invite you, beloved in Christ, to withdraw within yourselves for a few moments, in an attitude of prayer. If you have a crucifix or an image of the Heart of Jesus and the Heart of Mary before your eyes you will understand in these symbols the urgency of this call to charity, to love, to interest yourselves in your brothers on this earth, the fundamental precept of Christian life.

This lesson forms the nucleus of Christian preaching. “Whoever does not love does not know God because God is love”, says St. John. “If anyone says ‘I love God’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need, but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?” (cf.. 1Jn 4,8; 4,20; 3,17)

And in the teachings of the Pontiffs, if there is anything of which they remind us with extraordinary insistence it is this primacy of charity in the Christian life. Peter the first Pope, in the first encyclical directed to the nascent Christian Church, reminds them to:”Be persevering in prayer but above all love each other deeply because love covers over a multitude of sins” (1Pt 4, 7-8).

Leo XIII in his encyclical Rerum Novarum tells us that: “It is from an abundant effusion of charity that we await salvation, we are speaking of Christian charity which sums up the Gospel”; he continues “May the sacred ministers apply themselves above all things to the growth and development of charity within themselves and bring it to birth in others” (N 41).

Brothers in Christ, remember that generosity is even more valuable than honesty and piety. Remember that you have not fulfilled your obligations if you can only say: I have done nothing evil to anyone, for you are obliged to always do good to others. It is well not to do evil, but it is very evil not to do good.

Hatred and killing are what one reads about in the daily press; hatred is what poisons the air we breathe. How can the terrible sorrow of the wars in Europe and Asia leave us indifferent? We are in solidarity with an infinite number of men, women and children who suffer, perhaps as few have suffered on this earth, given that the repercussions of the European drama are echoed on all the continents. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” was the cynical comment of Cain (cf. Gn 4,9), and something very similar seems to motivate those who prefer to remain ignorant of this enormous modern suffering. These sufferings are ours; we cannot pretend ignorance with respect to them.

The numbers of children of all the races of the world who might become beloved disciples of Christ are innumerable, but they have not found the apostle who can show them the Master. I cannot be indifferent to them… They are my brothers on this earth, destined to be brothers of Christ. The fishermen, the farmers, the merchants in their tents in China, the pearl fishers who descend into the sea, the coal miners who bend their backs down in the veins of the earth, the nitrate workers and copper miners, the laborers of the high blast furnaces who have great aspirations and much pain to bear, their own and that of their homes. Christ tells me that I do not love enough, that I am not fraternal enough with all who suffer, that their pain does not reach far enough into my heart. I wish Lord to be tormented by hunger and thirst for justice; that they might torture me so that I may desire for them all the good I wish for myself.

Those who search for you in a tentative, groping way, far from the true light… they are so numerous, Lord. Many millions do not as yet know him who is the Way the Truth and the Life (Jn 14,6). How much suffering finds no consolation in their souls because they do not know him who taught us how to suffer with resignation, with a sense of solidarity and of social redemption.

Without looking any further than our own dear country, how many of our Chilean brothers claim our understanding, our justice and our charity? The doctrine of Christ is not preached in extensive areas of our own nation, the Pampa is almost totally without priests; parishes without pastors; how many young people if they were to think about this reality, might feel a new desire flame up in their souls and grasp that there is a great cause for which they can offer their lives. Lord, give us this love, the only love that can save us!