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Buenos Aires, Sunday, September 17, 2006

Father Oscar Pezzarini

Does God really listen?

There are so many people who asked for a beloved one's health, for a son who needs to find a job, for security, etc., and it seems that God “is deaf”, or that Prayer is not quite effectual. Therefore, we have to add to this reality which makes people suffer, some kind of “crisis” in their Faith, which also hurts a lot. God is not someone who was appointed to solve our problems, to keep us from fighting, from our suffering, and He is also not their cause, but He is the One who gives real sense to them, and in any case God's “goodness” does not just apply when He grants me everything I ask for, at the time and the way I ask for them. Our relation with God must not be a “business relation”, a relation in which we “love Him” inasmuch He loves me, instead, it should be based on our complete surrendering, like the true Love among people, which is not based on interest or selfishness, but on the pure Gift of Love.

The title of this reflection comes to me from meeting so many people who somehow feel “angry” with God because they ask for things and God does not grant them.

There are so many people who asked for a beloved one's health, for a son who needs to find a job, for security, etc., and it seems that God “is deaf”, or that Prayer is not quite effectual. Therefore, we have to add to this reality which makes people suffer, some kind of “crisis” in their Faith, which also hurts a lot.

This can make us reflect very much, starting from these questions we can arrive to various conclusions. Maybe the main point is the revision of which is the “idea” we have about God, and to point out which is the responsibility of Man towards Life, which is a gift given by God who has given us freedom, who put the world in our hands so we can enjoy it, who gave us understanding and willpower, which we do not always use appropiately.

Many times our relation with God adopts some “selfish” form, God is God inasmuch He grants me everything I ask for, and my reply is to love Him in accordance with how He grants me things.

Well, in this case God is no superior being, the Creator who creates the world due to His love, who shares with Man his ability for love, but He is just “someone else” with whom I “bargain” my love, my loyalty, even my Faith.

Actually God is someone who already knows what we require and what we need, and He also shows sich respect for the gift of freedom given to Man that it often seems as if He doesn't “fix” the always same mostakes Man makes, although it is well known that “everything contributes for good”.

If we love God it is not because He needs us, and in any case our relation with Him cannot be based on achieving that “He wants what I want”, it is us who must try to find out what it is that “God wants” for us and achieve it this way.

Our relation with God must not be a “business relation”, a relation in which we “love Him” inasmuch He loves me, instead, it should be based on our complete surrendering, like the true Love among people, which is not based on interest or selfishness, but on the pure Gift of Love.

The truth is God always listens to us, but not in a way which “feeds our selfishness” but looking after our best, although many times understanding it is hard for us, but surely we will succeed in our understanding when we discover the true image of God and not just that we may have “created” by error.

Father Oscar Pezzarini
Provincial Superior of the Work of Don Orione in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Mexico

Father Oscar Pezzarini together with Fr. Leonardo Abregú makes us reflect on Saturdays from 8 to 12 AM (GMT-03:00)with "VENTANA A LA VIDA", the Don Orione radio program he conducts on FM PROVIDENCIA, 90.3 MHz together with some residents of the Claypole Cottolengo (Raúl Romero, María Laura Andrada, Alberto Zoroch, Américo Torres), with the production of Roberto Beluzzo and Ignacio Cavalli as technical operator. You can also listen to FM PROVIDENCIA by clicking here.

Pequeño Cottolengo Don Orione 0800-333-6746 in Argentina, or +54 (11) 4268-7722 from abroad.

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