Aug 23 Sat
Why does God ask me to love Him?
All holiness and perfection of our soul lies in our love for Jesus Christ our God, who is our Redeemer and our supreme good. As a consequence of the love of God, we must acquire and nurture all the virtues that make a man perfect.
Can God ask for your love? Does not God deserve all your love?
From all eternity, He has loved you. And in this line, He speaks to you: “O man, consider carefully that I first loved you. You had not yet appeared in the light of day, nor did the world yet exist, but already I loved you. From all eternity I have loved you.”
Since God knows that favors persuade you, He wished to commit you to his love through his gifts: “I want to catch you with snares, those chains of love in which men allow themselves to be entrapped, so that you will love me.”
And all the gifts that He bestowed on you were given to this purpose. He gave you a soul, made you in his likeness, and endowed you with memory, intellect, and will; He gave you a body equipped with the senses; for you, He created heaven and earth and an abundance of things. He made all these things out of love for you, so that all creation might serve all men, and you in turn, might love God out of gratitude for so many gifts.
But God did not want to give you only beautiful gifts; the truth is that to win for Himself your love, He went so far as to give you the fullness of Himself. The eternal Father went so far as to give you his only Son. When He saw that we were all dead through sin and deprived of his grace, what did He do? Compelled, as the Apostle says, by the superabundance of his love for us, He sent his beloved Son to make reparation for us and to call us back to a sinless life.
God wanted to spare you from the punishment you deserved. He did so by giving you His Son, whom He did not spare from the Cross. Thus, He granted you at once every good: grace, love, and heaven; all these goods are certainly inferior to the Son. He who did not spare his own Son, but handed him over for all of us: how could He fail to give us all good things along with his Son?
“Once we realize this, we are immediately reminded of our wretchedness and our personal failings. But they should not dishearten us; we should not become pessimistic and put our ideals aside. Our Lord is calling us, in our present state, to share his life and make an effort to be holy."
The Sacrifice of Christ on Calvary is a proof of His Love, which invites you to imitate him. Your resolutions to be faithful, to correspond, will become a reality if you frequently contemplate Jesus Crucified. An ever-timely program for you and me.