Experience of Others in God
I see you in God. I speak to you in God. I embrace and greet you in God, and in God I am always united to you. (OCL, III, 694 p. 245)
The more a person practices the virtue of simplicity, the more he seeks God. The more he seeks God, the more he finds God. The more he finds God, the more he becomes one with God. The more he becomes one with God, the more God becomes his everything. In this state, a person begins whatever he does in God, does whatever he does in God, and ends whatever he does in God. His life in its totality is understood in his relationship with God. In this state, a person experiences his action, his interactions with others, his achievements as well as his failures, in God. It is a state of deep experience of union with God. When a person attains this state of union with God, distance does not matter and differences vanish away as a person is able to feel with others, encounter others, and interact with others in the realm of the spirit. St. Vincent Pallotti achieved this state of union with the whole of creation in his union with God. It is to this experience he refers when he writes to Melia and Marinoni the following: “I see you in God; I speak to you in God; I embrace you and greet you in God; and in God I am always united to you.” In this manner, the practice of the virtue of simplicity makes a person experience an intimate union with God.
Does the practice of the virtue of simplicity help me to seek, find and experience an intimate union with God? Does this union with God make me perceive the totality of my life in relationship with God? Does my union with God make me see the whole of creation, especially the human person, in my relationship with God?
But you, my other self, my companion and my bosom friend! You [are the one], whose comradeship I enjoyed … [and] at whose side I walked in the procession in the house of God. (Ps. 55: 14 – 15)