Cheon Seong Gyeong: Episode 83

Cheon Seong Gyeong Book 3: True Love
Chapter 3: The Practice of True Love
Section 2: The Practice of True love, 73
Section 3: The True Parents' Practice of True Love, 14

73 The way of divine sons and daughters requires you to know and adjust to the decrees of the Palace in the kingdom of heaven on earth and in heaven. This is the duty of heavenly princes and princesses. This is what Heavenly Father does, so we should inherit God's parental heart, inherit the heart of His kingship, and day and night aim to live up to it. This is what a true son or daughter of God does. A divine son or daughter should walk the way of love along the shortest route, without twists or turns, from the family level all the way to the kingdom of heaven.

74 A saint is a person who devotes his or her life for the sake of humanity. A divine son or daughter is a person who not only lives for the sake of humanity but also serves the people of the world as if they are serving God. Those whom history recognizes as world-level saints are those who lived and died for the sake of the people of the world, while those whom history recognizes as the children of God—divine sons and daughters—are people who were loyal to God but also lived for the sake of thousands of people in the same way that they lived for God. Such is the difference between world-level saints and divine sons and daughters. Truly devoted sons and daughters live for the sake of their brothers and sisters just as they live for their mother and father. True patriots serve their nation's people just as they serve their king. Likewise, true divine sons and daughters love all things that belong to God just as they love God.

Section 3.  The True Parents' Practice of True Love

1 Tribulations and persecution are no problem for those who have tasted God's love. I have suffered persecution to this day, but I walked tall all the way. It is only because I know God that I could overcome world-level difficulties and come to this place to meet you today. I know what God's love is. Who can block the way of true love? No one can stop even the human love between a man and a woman, so who can stop the love of a person who has tasted the love of God, the origin of human life? No one can.

The path of love True Parents walked

2 To share my history with you, I would have to tell so many stories. There were times of despair, but I never succumbed to despair. I was put in places of servitude, but I was never without a backbone. I still remember vividly my experience in Pyongyang. As I walked into prison wearing handcuffs, I waved to the members who had come to say goodbye to me and bid them farewell. I will never forget that moment. Other people go to prison in disappointment and despair, but I went with a heart of hope. God had told me what sorts of people I would meet in prison. When I was hungry, God mobilized people to bring me food. Even though I was unable to speak about the truth, I was always confident because God showed me living evidence that He was with me by making many people come to me and follow me.

3 One cost of following the Will was that my clan came to ruin. My father, my mother, and most of my siblings perished. Yet with the destruction of my family, God drove me to love all of you. By sacrificing my family and relatives, God led me to love my enemies and their families. Drawing compensation from my enemies for the sacrifice of my family was God's idea; it is the teaching of Unificationism. It explains that God sacrifices His own sons and daughters and those who are closest to Him as He loves and strives to recover nations and peoples that are owned by the enemy.

4 In my historical position, I have been through all manner of shame. You have no idea how much humiliation I endured to set straight the way of the Will. Once I devoted myself for one year and eight months to witness to one woman. Every time I went to her house her husband persecuted me, yet still, I sat down at the table to eat with him and witness to her family. To uphold the Principle, I went through the worst course of humiliation a man can endure.

5 In the course of attending God, I never thought of myself. I never asked God, "God, You call me Your beloved Son, so why are You giving me a life of unremitting difficulty?" Instead, I thought of God as more deserving of sympathy than me. That was my thinking even when I was behind bars. From the very first step of my walk on the way of God's Will, I comforted God. I told Him, "I am still alive to do Your Will. Thank you for protecting me." I walked such a path in order to leave behind a standard of indemnity in history. To this day, this is the tradition of the Unification Church.No one can invade it; no one can take it away. Only Heavenly Father can touch it, no one else.

6 On the way of the Will, no matter where you go, if you have the bone marrow of love, heaven and earth will protect you. Even if you are imprisoned, you will not be defeated. In prison, I never prayed, "Father! Your beloved son is in prison, so please take revenge on my enemies." Instead, I prayed, "The barriers to God's love have not yet fallen, so I must go through this course in prison. As Moses struck the Red Sea with his staff to divide it, please strike my mind and body, to divide the Red Sea of this fallen world. My flesh may be torn and my bones may be broken, but I will go on. I am still alive!"

7 Until I complete the Will, I cannot afford to be exhausted. It is because I know God's situation. In this respect, I am different from you. Even Though all of you may abandon the way of God's Will, I absolutely cannot. You may be able to return to the world and give up the Will, but I cannot. I must keep going, even if I am the only one remaining.

8 I have done a great deal of work up until now, and I also invested large amounts of money. But I never invested money for the purpose of making more money. I have never worked for honor or fame. I have shed blood, sweat, and tears to liberate God from His sorrow and pain and to bring true peace to humanity. Why? Unless we liberate God from sorrow and pain on every level—from the individual and the family to the nation and the world—and thus make Him happy, true peace can never come to humankind. Because I thoroughly understand this point, I have been practicing this way of life.

9 I have walked this path at the sacrifice of my family, my wife, and my children. When I began this path, I never thought of first giving worldly blessings to my mother and father and my clan. The way of a patriot is to give his love and devotion to his nation before serving his own family. Such is the way of a patriot. The way of a world-level saint is to leave his own country behind, set out to love and serve the world, and teach the people of the world to love their own nations. The way of divine sons and daughters is to be born anew as princes and princesses of the heavenly kingdom and live by the divine law on earth. Then they will continue loving based on the divine law when they go to the heavenly kingdom in heaven.

Loving your enemy

10 In my life, I have had many experiences as a wayfarer. I wandered along many roads at sunset as the Last light heralded nightfall. I still cannot forget the time I prayed, carrying my rucksack on my back, "I have continued on for Your sake. I left behind my wife and child. Yet I cannot do otherwise." I was facing a fork in the road.  I had to succeed in going the path of loyalty to God. I knew that if I failed, I would become nothing but an enemy. Therefore I prayed, resolving not to take time to love my own wife and child until I could welcome God to the earth. This is the bloody road I had to take in order to save this world. I knew that unless I made this resolution, I could not build a true world. You too need to make such a resolution. You are in a position to build this world with me, so you should not weep while holding on to your wife and children. Rather, you should shed tears while embracing the greater world that you are working to recover in the future.

11 There were no shortcuts, there was no smooth path for this wayfarer with a rucksack on his back. Mine was a tiresome, difficult path as I searched while shedding blood and tears. My course as a wayfarer, as a youth seeking the path of Heaven, was like that of a hunted and hounded lamb. On that path the tears that fell from my eyes were not my tears; they were tears that God shed through me.

12 The Bible warns us not to forsake our first love. My first love is for God, and to this day I have never forsaken Him, even while walking the way of suffering and adversity as I carried the responsibility for the providence of restoration. No matter what anyone said, and even though my life was torn to pieces thousands of times, I could not deny that love. God knows it. When I see God, I feel heartrending sorrow. When I think of God's situation, sometimes I feel resentful toward the thirty million Korean people who are opposing God's Will. But when I think of His suffering throughout the six thousand years of providential history, of His endless endurance as He leads the providence of restoration, I feel ashamed. This is why I too must endure.

13 If God had cursed fallen human beings, their way for the future would have been blocked. But God did not do that, and hence the hope of salvation has remained throughout human history. I have inherited this tradition and this heart of love; therefore, I prayed for my enemies, even though they hounded me to the point of death. I filled their cups with God's blessings. I am praying even now for God to bless them. This is my teaching as the teacher of the Unification Church. You who have been attending me for many years cannot deny it, because you witnessed it with your own eyes and experienced it as a fact. I am the one who carries God's bitter sorrow deep in my heart. Yet I know that even if I could draw a sword and slash to pieces the heads and bodies of the thirty million people of this nation who behave like my enemies, it would still not dissolve God's bitter sorrow. Instead, since I know that the way of love is to love them even more, I have to make known to them the love of God that I keep in my heart.

14 I was whipped brutally while walking this path. Sometimes just thinking of what they did to me filled me with indignation. When I felt that way I just wanted to smash them all. But when I thought of God, I pitied my enemies. I knew that God still persisted in His affection for them and I resolved to love them more. When I thought of that, there was nothing I could do but try to comfort God. When I returned after being severely beaten, I busied myself with trying to comfort the broken heart of my father, who shed bitter tears on receiving me, His son, in that condition. I have been busy on my path. I paid no heed when village dogs barked at me, or when a landslide nearly buried me. This has been my path as the teacher of the Unification Church. For decades of my life, I devoted myself to this path. During the time of the Japanese occupation, even while I was busy with this work, I was persecuted and imprisoned. Wherever I went, I was harassed, hounded, rejected, and cast into miserable circumstances. Still, I never reproached Satan; I only lamented that the environment was not yet prepared, and I continued my work.