Devotion

Devotion means to worship God out of love. Love can be volitional, expressed in acts of dedication and sacrifice, as in the biblical commandment, “Love God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.” In the Abrahamic faiths, devotion is primarily expressed in acts of loyalty and dedication to God’s will.

Love for God can also be an emotional experience. Devotional worship is expressed in joyful and emotional outpourings of praise and song and in the constant longing for God’s sweet presence. This powerful mode of religious consciousness is particularly manifest in the Hindu and Sikh bhakti tradition, the dancing and song of Sufi Muslims and Hassidic Jews, and in the outpourings of the Holy Spirit in Pentecostal Christianity.

Many passages of scripture describe this mystical emotion as a transfigured sublime love of a bride for her beloved, as in the Song of Solomon in the Bible, in the loves of Radha and Krishna or Sita and Rama in the Hindu tradition, and in the devotion of Mary Magdalene to Jesus. Father Moon teaches that there is a fundamental link between the love of man and woman and the joining of heaven and earth.

Father Moon also adds a new, minor key to this longing to experience God’s love by bringing in the element of God’s suffering heart. If God’s real circumstances are full of suffering and pain, then the longing for emotional unity with God should also take us into the experience of divine sorrow.

His prayers are full of tears, commiserating with God. Knowing that God is in pain also motivates us to act in this world to alleviate His suffering by saving our brothers and sisters from sin, oppression and despair. At this deep level, heart and action become one.