We urgently need the meditation of another’s eyes to love ourselves and accept ourselves. The eyes may be those of a parent, a friend, a spiritual director; but above all they are those of God our Father. The look in his eyes is the purest, truest, tenderest, most loving, and most hope-filled in this world. The greatest gift given those who seek God’s face by persevering in prayer may be that one day they will perceive something of this divine look upon themselves; they will feel themselves loved so tenderly that they will receive the grace of accepting themselves in depth.

What has just been said has an important consequence. When people cut themselves off from God, they deprive themselves of any real possibility of loving themselves. This also works the other way: people who hate themselves cut themselves off from God. In ‘Dialogues of the Carmelites’ by Georges Bernanos, the aged prioress addresses the following words to the young Blanche de la Force: “Above all, never despise yourself. It is difficult to despise ourselves without offending God in us.”

To finish with, here is a short passage from Henri Nouwen’s beautiful book ‘The Return of the Prodigal Son’:

For a very long time I considered low self-esteem to be some kind of virtue. I had been warned so often against pride and conceit that I came to consider it a good thing to deprecate myself. But now I realize that the real sin is to deny God’s first love for me, to ignore my original goodness. Because without claiming that first love and that original goodness for myself, I lose touch with my true self and embark on the destructive search among the wrong people and in the wrong places for what can only be found in the house of my Father.” –Father Jacques Philippe “Interior Freedom”

The most important and fruitful acts of our freedom are not those by which we transform the outside world as those by which we change our inner attitude in light of the faith that God can bring good out of everything without exception. Even when externally there is nothing to be done, we still have inner freedom to continue to love. –Father Jacques Philippe ‘Interior Freedom’

The vacuum created by the arrival of freedom
And the possibilities it seems to offer
It’s got nothing to do with you, if one can grasp it

Lyrics from a 70s rock song that stuck in my mind

God is eternally present, eternally young, is eternal and new, and our past and future are his. He can forgive everything, purify everything, renew everything. In the present moment, because of his infinitely merciful love, we always have the possibility of starting again, not impeded by the past or tormented by the future.Living in the present permits our hearts to expand. The effort to live in the reality and in each moment is of the greatest importance in times of suffering. St. Therese of Lisieux said during her illness, “I only suffer for one moment. It is because people think about the past and the future that they become discouraged and despair.” We can always have the grace to bear today the suffering that is ours now. –Father Jacques Philippe ‘Interior Freedom’