In a family, parents should completely inherit the vertical axis and align themselves to it. Next, parents are to relate horizontally at an angle 90 degrees to the axis. The axis of love exists in only one place. That's why centering upon this axis, the family extends to the tribe, nation and world. In order to make world unity, Father is correcting the axis right now. Therefore, Father should conquer the position of the "prince of thought" in order to establish and signal the direction. He will conquer this position not by exercising force but by digesting with love. The family is created to be the textbook for life in the Kingdom of Heaven. If you love every person who is your grandfather's age as your own grandfather, you will surely go to the Kingdom of Heaven; if you love a person who is your parents' age as your own parents, there will be no boundaries for you in the spirit world. If you can consider all the young people in the world as your own sons and daughters, you will be able to visit any place in the Kingdom of Heaven. Even though there are twelve pearl gates and the direction is already set up in the spirit world, you will be able to pass through at any place. The family is the teaching material-that is, a textbook through which you can relate to the whole Kingdom of Heaven. If you apply the axis to the nation, you will become a patriot, and if you apply it to the world, you will become a saint. That is the value of human beings. Where is the discipline hall of true love? That is "God and Our Family," which is the topic of today's sermon. Jehovah is the vertical God and Adam is the horizontal God. The family is the workshop-through-exemplification for education in the love of humanity. It is the representative environment for establishing the center of heart. If you trust each other and lead a happy marital life in your family, you will stand as the center of the whole universe and be blessed with happiness. That is the beginning point of the ideal dominion. Beings without love have no meaning to their existence. Where is the center of the universe? It is the family. Where is the base for true love to settle down? It is the family in which you live right now. Therefore, the family of the original ideal is to grasp the love of the universe and to experience the protection of the universe. Also, such a family is to extend to the national level in order to walk the way of patriotism and, finally, it is to reach the world level. The person who loves a family is called a son or daughter of filial piety, the person who loves a nation is called a patriot, and the person who loves the world is called a saint. Brothers and sisters! Why do you have affection for your family? Because it is the base for free action centering upon parental love. God also should act freely there. When society is composed of the internal individuals with a nucleus of love, regardless of their poor appearance, God becomes free. Don't you think so? When a guest visits your house, you feel uncomfortable, don't you? Why is it? Because there's no bond of love with the guest. You feel awkward because the bond of love is not set up in all four directions. Therefore, our way is to become men and women of character. Why do you have affection for your family? Because in the family there is a foundation on which you can freely give and take love, which you can enjoy. That's why people long for the hometown where parents and brothers and sisters live together. A true family is the place where a husband loves his wife as his mother and a wife loves her husband as her brother. Next, the world where a husband loves his wife as God and a wife loves and respects her husband as God is the Kingdom of Heaven of the ideal family. Such a tradition should be realized on earth. You cannot abandon your mother or your brothers. You cannot abandon anybody in your family. Therefore, the word "divorce" cannot exist. A husband represents the father and an older brother, so a wife cannot abandon her husband any more than she can abandon her father and older brother. You have to love the world with such love. When you see a person who is the same age as your father, you should love him as your father, and when you see a person the same age as your mother, you should love her as your mother. Wherever you go, you shouldn't think people are just strangers. Instead, you should consider them as your own family members. When you see old people, you should consider them as your parents and should be able to cry together with them if they are in a sad situation. You should always have such a heart. The family composed of parents, a couple, and children is the microcosm of the world. The way for humankind to live is to expand love for the family into love for the world. You should consider and love old people as your grandparents, middle-aged people as your parents, people who look older than you as your older brothers and sisters, and people who look younger than you as your younger brothers and sisters. So the true person is the one who considers everybody as his or her family and whose heart can love the whole of humankind by transcending the walls and barriers of nations. Then you are truly qualified to love your father and mother. "I'm born as a white, but I will serve and attend a black grandfather and a black aunt," or "I will attend whoever suffers in difficult surroundings as my parents." These are the conditions for an ideal environment. Life together with grandparents, parents and children is sound family life. When one generation is missing from a family, the family is crippled. Once one ideal family is established, that family should serve as the bricks to build the Kingdom of Heaven. We have the mission to establish ideal families on earth. When people who experience their grandparents' deep love in their family come out to the society-for example, the streets of New York-they will feel very intimate toward the old people, and the old people will treat them as their grandchildren. Using any method, they will communicate with each other, feeling close to each other. Young people who have served their grandparents will try to help old people right away whenever they are in need of aid. When children who have received love from their parents go outside and meet people their parents' age, they will feel very close and will try to talk with them and help them. When people who have a beautiful relationship with their brothers and sisters in their family go outside into the society, they will easily get along with people and have close relationships with their neighbors, and they feel natural even in relationship with the opposite sex. They come to feel the opposite sex as their brothers and sisters without any sexual desires or unsound ideas. The Kingdom of Heaven is the family where you are able to experience such love relationships centering upon God. Raise your hand if you like old grandfathers and grandmothers. What about those who don't like them? If you are given 500-year-old grandparents, what will you do? Will you still like them? To like older people is to like God, because God is the oldest being in the world. If you love God, you should love everybody regardless of age. That is to say, you are to love God's family, which is composed of people of many ages. People with all nationalities-Japanese, Korean, American, etc.-belong to God's family. The person with racial prejudice is not the one who loves God's family. The ideal world can be established when there's no prejudice. Isn't that true? What is the ideal world? Being colorful is more ideal than being one color, so in that sense, which is more ideal, five races in unity living together or five races living separately? To live together is more ideal. Therefore, we have to repair the world, which is not built in an ideal way. Do you think God likes Reverend Moon repairing this crippled world? God wants to support such a person. From this year on, you should focus on how to magnify the heartistic bond of the heavenly family which inherits heavenly tradition and loves humankind. We should become parents, husbands and wives, and brothers and sisters centering on the family God desires. In the United States, where do people go when they reach the age of sixty? They don't go to their children's houses or neighbor's, but to the asylum for the aged. It is ideal for old people to visit their grandsons and granddaughters. Which does a grandmother prefer: going to the grandson's house or going to a home for the aged? Blessed families in the Unification Church should be able to attend and serve the grandparents and parents of every people. Do you want to marry into the house where grandparents-in-law and parents-in-law live together? Do you want a household with many younger brothers and sisters? Or do you want a house where only your couple can live? It is the universal law that you get married and live together with your grandparents-in-law and parents-in-law. Grandparents live by themselves in America. Old people live by themselves. When they are asked, "Are you happy?" they answer, "I want to go to my son's house." That means they cannot go to their son's house. When we ask if they miss their grandchildren, no one says, "No." They are unhappy people. What has the absolute authority to judge the world? It is the true family, not an individual. Satan strikes the family. Disunity of a family leads to the rupture of the father-son relationship, the husband-wife relationship, and the whole family. The wound of the people who experienced the break-up of their family will never be cured. It is no use to try to console such people. In order to be God's son, you should resemble God's heart. God's heart is planted in the world. Therefore, you should love the world. If you cannot love the world due to the great distance between yourself and the world, you are to love your nation, tribe, family and parents, because parents represent God, a couple represents Adam and Eve, and the children represent the whole of humankind. We should put value not in the ideal world, but rather in the ideal person. That's why you should love people in order to love the world. The method of love is the same as that of man loving woman or woman loving man. What is the center and where do you start if you want to love the nation and the world? You start by loving one individual. How do we do that? The love between man and man, or between woman and woman, is centered upon some particular purpose; it is not emotional love. But the love between man and woman is centered upon the entities themselves, not upon a specific external purpose. Therefore, it is the motivating love. In this perspective, we should sincerely love our spouse in order to love the world. That is to say man should truly love woman and likewise woman should truly love man. With such a loving mind toward your husband or wife, you are to love all men and women of the world. Further, you should realize that you are the being of value who is able to receive love from your subject or object. When man loves the world, he should love the world as the representative of his wife and should value the world for being as precious as his wife. The formation of a family is to be the standard for the formation of a nation. No matter how great a world you may establish, it will be in vain if the formation of the family is illegitimate. That's why the Unification Church is shouting out for "Cosmos-ism," that is, "Heavenly Family-ism." This "Familyism" is the fruition of true love. A family is the ethical foundation of the society and is the exemplary, fundamental and primary organization. In such a family, love becomes the criterion of value.
|