The immense tenderness and intense love that emerge from God our Father’s Divine Heart for us, His children on earth, have to be felt to be truly known. He is the most tender, intensely loving but firm Father, never pushing any of us beyond what we can endure in the present moment, although He continually but progressivelysets further spiritual targets for us to achieve, to facilitate growth in our present journey toward holiness – Himself as our inheritance. Our Father is the perfect Parent and His perfection can never be approximated by the most impeccable standards of man-made idealization.

Even when, through His infinite light, God the Father lets a soul see all the sins committed against Him and not repented from, He still remains the gentlest of fathers because throughout the process of reviewing sinfulness with the soul, He provides her with all the love and mercy needed to go safely through this process – mercy that is much sweeter, gentler and tender than His infinite love. Indeed, some of us may find themselves thinking that it is better to keep on sinning, to get more of this sweet mercy from our Father. But this is not the way things work, given that two things our Father abhors the most are deceit and manipulation.

When the soul sees and fully understands the pain that she has inflicted upon her ever-loving Father through her sins, the soul initially does not want to do anything but flee rapidly. The resultant darkness in the soul from sins makes it difficult for the soul to be penetrated by the Divine Light in every nook and cranny of the soul’s existence. But on seeing such a reaction through the benevolent lens of His mercy, our Father holds the soul more gently and steadfastly in His warm embrace, preventing the soul from fleeing while proceeding to cure her fully of her spiritual sickness.

Upon experiencing this sweet, firm love, the soul comes to understand with greater depth the real nature of the wounds inflicted upon our Father’s Heart. She also starts gaining a glimmer of understanding about the immense and unmatched love and tenderness that God the Father has for a soul: a love that He does not hesitate to shower upon the soul in the form of ceaseless, ever-surprising and increasing graces. So instead of fleeing, the soul proceeds to nudge closer into the Father’s embrace, pledging within herself never to wound such love again, thus commencing the most liberating and intimate relationship for the soul with the only Person who can ever be, is and ever will be her one, true and only Father.