Aug 20 Tue
Why does God want us to love Him?
All holiness and perfection of the soul lies in our love for Jesus Christ, our God, who is our Redeemer and our supreme good. God's love leads us to acquire and increase all the virtues that make a person perfect.
Doesn't God deserve all our love? He has loved us from all eternity. He tells us, "O man, consider carefully that I loved you first. You had not yet appeared in the light of day, nor did the world exist, but I already loved you. I have loved you from all eternity."
Since God knew that favors entice people, He wanted to bind us to His love through His gifts. And all the gifts He bestowed upon us were given for this purpose. He gave us a soul, made in His likeness, and endowed us with memory, intellect, and will. He gave us a body equipped with senses. He created heaven and earth and an abundance of things for us. He made all these things out of love for us, so that all of creation might serve us, and we, in turn, might love God out of gratitude for so many gifts.
But He didn't just give us beautiful things. To win our love, He went so far as to give us the fullness of Himself. And what did He do, when He saw that we were all dead through sin, and deprived of His grace? The eternal Father went so far as to send us His only Son, to suffer and die for us. Jesus made reparation for us and called us back to a sinless life.
He did not spare His Son, to spare us of the punishment; He bestowed upon us every good thing at once: grace, love, and heaven. All of these goods are certainly inferior to the Son. If He did so, how could He fail to give us all good things along with His Son?
Thus, God’s love should remain alive in us; it should grow, and inspire all our actions. If we lacked love, all the good things we might do in God's service would be useless and in vain.
We have to love God as we are, even though, at times, we may seem to feel nothing. Our love will be purer and more supernatural.
St. Josemaría: “Sometimes one hears love described (you'll have heard me mention this more than once) as if it were a movement towards self-satisfaction, or merely a means of selfishly fulfilling one's personality.
And I have always told you that it isn't so. True love demands getting out of oneself, giving oneself. Genuine love brings joy in its wake, a joy that has its roots in the shape of the Cross."
Let us lose our fear of giving ourselves too much. Let us give ourselves to God and souls without reserve, without limits.
The more we love God, with deeds, the more we accomplish ourselves as human beings and children of God.
Some excerpts from St Alphonsus Liguori and St. Josemaría.
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