© 2023 Jean Claude Romeuf
© 2023 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
John Claude Romeuf
Vinales, Cuba
After leaving the Cow cave which crosses the mountain and which here is called the mogote, I met a friendly old farmer. At 83 years old, he was still cultivating the land and had seen me coming from afar.
I saw it too!
He was waiting for the stranger who was passing through his property, near his house whose roof had flown off to Paradise because of a cyclone.
I wanted to have a little chat with this man.
After eight months without rain, the demon had destroyed everything he could have eaten. But God in his great goodness had wanted his tobacco field to be preserved. He therefore had a sufficient quantity of leaves left for his personal consumption.
I smoke ten cigars every day, he told me.
Before I got quite close to him, he held one out to me, sat down on a rickety stool, and advised me to do the same. For him, it was necessary to work and rest.
For an hour, we chatted about everything and nothing, like God for example. But the man who was nevertheless a believer, was in no hurry to go up to Paradise like the roof of his house had done!
When I got near my house, I met another man who said he was a teacher.
There was in his gaze a little of the rain that had fallen the day before, and also the light of the lightning which, flooding the sky, had been engraved in his eyes like on a photographic plate.
Because of this, I knew that the one who had just called me “Amigo” was intelligent and that wickedness had not been able to force his soul to enter it. Immediately he wanted to know what my nationality was.
I am French.
And him:
I have a lot of French friends.
I am sometimes as innocent as a dove, but I do not like to be thought of as a pigeon. So today I will be as prudent as a serpent!
I ask him if he knows my friends Marc and Michel, showing him some photos.
Of course, as I expected, he answers in the affirmative.
Welcome to the “Lie Club”!
I feel in my element to discuss!
I really like this man, although I know he is lying to me because he wants to get something from me.
I am as much of a liar as he is, probably even more so! If there was a doctorate in the Science of Lying at the University, I would succeed with ease, obtaining a Very Good distinction!
I invite him to drink a mojito at the local bar. While we enjoy our aperitif, he offers me a room to rent in his house. I have to refuse because tomorrow morning, a taxi will take me to Trinidad.
We will see each other another time, maybe next year God willing!
Good Señor, are you a believer? He asks me.
With the memory of a sentence taken from a holy book, but which is perhaps not the exact sentence, I answer him:
Why do you say I am good? Only God is Good!
Now I can wring his neck! Long live the Revolution! Hasta Siempre my Commander!
I continue my speech by saying that it is easy to believe in God and kill people in his Name! But living God’s ideal is not at all the same. For this, it is useful to know that the Heart of God dwells in the heart of the one who desires it. It is therefore not necessary to go and pray in a church, a stone house, because the house of God is our heart!
God’s ideal is no longer just to love others as a brother loves his brothers and sisters, but to love them as a father loves his children, as God loves his sons and daughters.
If we turn to Jesus who is both our Brother and our Father, we can love both as a brother and as a father.
¶ What to do?
The words of this debate will only indirectly interest supremacy.
Everyone knows that for the Supreme, to do is to act with gratuity, selflessness. The left hand must not know what the right hand has given.
It would be very inappropriate for me to debate on these subjects, I who always have the impression of doing nothing or at least not enough.
No, the what to do that I am talking about would rather be a how to do so that we are the diffusers of the divine message of Jesus. This, while knowing that the help given to others, can be a factor of spiritual approach. But let us not forget that if we were capable of performing miracles, it is not for that that people would follow us. We only have to remember the feeding of the five thousand. It was rather the life of Jesus that seduced those thirsty for truth and not his miracles.
His message is not complicated, it is very simple, within the reach of those who listen to it, whether they are a great thinker or a person with more modest reasoning.
It’s all about curiosity, then faith, not just intelligence or culture. Most people who believe have confidence in God. They are willing to follow the words of Jesus and the ideal he advised us to seek, knowing that the Father is love and that his presence is deep within us.
It is with these people that we will make the most beautiful catches. It is in their minds that we will sow a seed that may one day germinate.
It is not for nothing that the epic of Jesus’ life is found at the end of the book. The other three parts prepare us to situate our Creator Son in the midst of the Grand Universe. At the same time, we situate our place under his help and guidance.
One might think that “The Life and Teachings of Jesus” is the easiest part to read. Perhaps, but in any case, it is the most difficult to assimilate, because it is no longer a question of bringing into play only the faculties and reasoning skills of our intelligence. The help of the spirit in our mind plays a large role in the approach to the Being Jesus. When we are allowed to approach these teachings in this way, the danger consists in taking everything that is emotional for truth.
The personality of Jesus, both human and divine, is best perceived with the help of the Monitor of Mysteries and the Spirit of Truth. This intimate penetration of our relationship with Jesus is proportional to the degree of our love developing over time. We are not aware of this growth because it is located beyond objective thought, in the midst of superconsciousness, right in the middle of the Kingdom where God reigns in each of his sons.
This is why the personality of Jesus can be known by all those who approach him with childlike trust, that is, with the trust that a child has for his parents.
It is not for nothing either that the last sentence of the Book sums up the main message of Jesus: “The idea of Father still remains the highest human concept of God”.
If we develop secondly that this Father lives in the heart of each one of us, there will not be much left for us to announce to the world. This is simply the ideal of the Kingdom of God.
¶ Prayer of abandonment
I abandon myself to You,
Do with me as You please
Whatever you do with me,
I thank you.
I am ready for anything, I accept everything,
Provided that Your will be done in me, in All Your creatures.
I desire nothing else, my God.
I place my soul in your hands.
I give it to You, my God, with all the love of my heart because I love You, and it is a need of love for me to give myself, to put myself back in Your hands:
hands; without measure with infinite confidence, because You are my Father.
Charles de Foucauld.