{"id":292586,"date":"2011-07-08T09:15:15","date_gmt":"2011-07-08T07:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/the-immensity-of-god\/"},"modified":"2024-05-13T20:43:25","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T18:43:25","slug":"the-immensity-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/the-immensity-of-god\/","title":{"rendered":"The Immensity of God"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Contemplating the immensity of the universe, the extraordinary beauty of nature, its power<strong>, I was spontaneously turned to the Creator of all things<\/strong> and I seemed to understand something new of God\u2019s immensity.  <strong>The impression it made on me was so strong and so new<\/strong> that I would have knelt down to worship, praise, and glorify God. I felt the need to do it, as if it were actually my vocation. And, now as my eyes seemed to be opening for the first time, I understood as never before, who it is that we\u2019ve chosen as our Ideal; or rather, who it is who has chosen us.  <strong>I saw him so great, that it seemed impossible<\/strong> to me that he should think of us. And this impression of his greatness remained in my heart for some days. Now it\u2019s a whole new thing for me when I pray: \u201cHoly be your name\u201d or \u201cGlory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit\u201d: it has become a necessity of the heart (. . .)  <strong>We are on the way.<\/strong> And when someone travels, they already think about the place where they will be welcomed when they arrive. We should do the same.  <strong>Won\u2019t we praise God when we are there?<\/strong> Then let us praise him starting from now. Let us allow our hearts to cry out our love, to proclaim it, together with angels and saints: \u201cHoly, Holy, Holy\u201d.  <strong>Let us express our praise <\/strong>with our lips and with our hearts. Let us take advantage of this opportunity to revive those daily prayers that have this as their object. And let us also give glory to him with our entire being. (. . . )  <strong>Let us praise him beyond nature or in the depths of our hearts. <\/strong>Above all, let us live dead to ourselves and alive to the will of God, to love toward our neighbors. As Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity said, we are also a \u201cpraise of his glory\u201d. In this way we\u2019ll anticipate Heaven a bit, and God will be repaid for the indifference of so many hearts who live in today\u2019s world.  <em>Chiara Lubich, Rocca di Papa (Rome) 22 January 1987<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During this holiday time for many, we publish an excerpt from a \u201csmall experience\u201d \u2013 as she calls it \u2013 of Chiara Lubich from 1987. It invites us to contemplate the beauty of nature and offer praise to its Creator. <br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.centrochiaralubich.org\/\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"link_left\">\u00bb Chiara Lubich Centre<\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292586\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}