Acceptance
Tolerance
What is the subtle difference between tolerance and acceptance of another?
To love means not judging. To love means not criticizing. To love means not always being angry at someone or other, nor apparently tolerating someone and then looking daggers at him when he comes near you. Do you think people are deaf and blind? I think we must work on ourselves to prevent this and change our way of living.
There are still traits which I would like us work on more deeply. We always come back to the word “Love” because I have no other! You really must understand what it means to love.
To love means not judging. To love means not criticizing. To love means not always being angry at someone or other, nor apparently tolerating someone and then looking daggers at him when he comes near you. Do you think people are deaf and blind? I think we must work on ourselves to prevent this and change our way of living.
These fits of anger within you: do you realise that they take a day of your life away? So you must understand what they mean, these successive fits of anger that you blame on your bad temper. You think that it gives you a superior personality, but I tell you no. There is nothing more beautiful than humility and having a gentle and tender heart. The rest is given to you as extra. Those fits of anger and those ways of wanting to show that you exist are childish and destroy you. Do not destroy your image: God’s image is destroyed at that same moment. Take a conscious new look at all of that.
Tolerance is not a virtue. What is a virtue, rather, is a word which we do not appreciate much: acceptance. We pay lip service to tolerance, but we do not accept. And I say to you: to enter into this humility we speak of, and this love, you must shed from your thoughts all tolerance that you have created and practiced over the years. I think that we are big enough, since you have become little children again… When we become small, you know, Christ said: “No man shall enter my Father’s paradise unless he has become like a small child.” That does not mean to return to childhood for bottle-feeding! That is not what Christ meant. He meant with a pure heart, as a small child comes to ask his father or mother when he is hungry, thirsty or needs a hug.
That is the spirit which you must recapture in yourself, because you are that small child, that little girl or boy, but you have now become a fully-fledged adult, with a responsible attitude. I think of all the youths that are still here this morning. I know they will do very, very fine work wherever they are, and in whatever they may undertake in this life. If we talk about all this, it is because I know that you love justice, you do not like pretence and you reject hypocrisy; you have written to me about it, and you know it yourselves. You will set an example, even to your parents, but with gentleness… It is very important for us to know that you are taking over, that we have truly handed over to you. So that you can truly show us the qualities you have which will be used to bring about a new humanity, a different point of view and way of living, and a behaviour so much richer and more worthy than some of us.
In any case, all of us adults have passed through many difficulties to get to this union between one another. But it must be reinforced by solidarity, by this love that I spoke of a while ago, which is the link between man and God. That is why the Trinity exists.
He wanted to show you that we are at the heart of the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The centre is man. When we realize that, we understand that we are at the heart of God. We are not beside, nor under, nor above, but in the heart. And if we are so, then God knows who we are. He has given you every benefit needed to access that dimension which He offered to you upon coming to earth. He has given you every means for becoming what you are.
We have taken shortcuts. Thinking to shorten the road, we have instead made it longer. We think shortcuts are the quickest way, but we forget about the mountains, valleys, floods, difficulties, rocks to climb, and this takes time. The Royal road is filled with light; we can see where we set foot. That is the whole difference.
God does not ask in a peremptory, aggressive or authoritarian way. No, God does not behave like that. He would like you to measure up to what you are. He would like you to be fulfilled in all the beauty that is your own.