Jun 28 Sun
Why should I love God above everything?
Jesus teaches us that God must be the principal object of our love. We must love creatures in a secondary, subordinate way. “He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me...”
All other earthly loves are enriched, purified, and encouraged to grow when we love God. Our heart expands, and our capacity for loving increases.
To love God the way He wants us to love him, we have to die to those disordered tendencies which incline and induce us to sin. We must die to that egocentricity which leads man to seek himself in everything he does.
Yet God wants us to preserve all that is healthy and upright and truly human in our nature, all that is good and humanly characteristic in each unique individual. Nothing genuinely human, of the positive, of the perfectible, will be lost. The more a man dies to his selfish ego, the more truly human he becomes, and so much the better is he prepared for supernatural life.
The Christian who struggles to deny himself finds he is living a new life, the life of Jesus. Grace fills us with the same desires as Christ: our one objective becomes that of fulfilling the will of the Father. That, then, is the real expression of love and its clearest manifestation.
Love of God is nourished in prayer and in the reception of the sacraments, in the constant struggle against our defects, in the unceasing effort to maintain a living presence of God throughout the whole of our working day, in our relations with others, in our times of rest... The Eucharist above all must be the spring at which our love of God is perpetually refreshed and strengthened. In a way, to love thus is already to possess Heaven on earth.
Our love of God is merely a response to His love. He loved us first. That is why we ask him, Lord, give me the love with which you want me to love you.
We correspond with the love of God when we love others; when we see in them the dignity proper to the human person, made as it has been in the image and likeness of God, created with an immortal soul and called to give glory to God for all eternity.
Love is to approach that wounded man we come across on our journey each day; it is to bind up his wounds, restore him to health, and take care of him in all things. We must exert ourselves on his behalf, making a serious effort to bring him to God. Separation from God is always the greatest of evils, and those thus separated from him need our help and our urgent attention. Apostolate is a wonderful sign of our love for God, and is the way to love him more.
Our whole life has to become this constant seeking after Jesus, in good times and in those that seem bad, in our work and in our leisure, in the street and in the bosom of the family. This quest is the only one that can give meaning to our lives.