Friday, July 28, 2023
Believe God
Wednesday, July 26, 2023
God does not hear sinners
Monday, July 24, 2023
What is Faith
Friday, July 21, 2023
Jesus is Everything
Saturday, July 15, 2023
God is Love
247. GOD IS LOVE
O God, who are love, make me know and believe in your love (1 Jn 4:16)
“God is love” (1 Jn 4:16), eternal, infinite, substantial love, just as everything in God is beautiful, good, perfect, and holy, so everything in God is love: his beauty, holiness, wisdom, truth, omnipotence and even his justice are love. Love in God is the eternal act of his will, a most holy, perfect act, because it is always directed to the sovereign Good; this is the love with which God loves himself, precisely because he is the one supreme and eternal Good, to which no other good can be preferred. The holy and infinite love which God has for himself has nothing in common with what we call self-love or egoism, that disordered love by which we prefer ourselves to God.
We are selfish because we tend to love ourselves to the exclusion of every other affection; but God is so free from every shadow of egoism that, even though he loves himself infinitely and is wholly satisfied with his infinite good, he wills to diffuse his love and his good outside himself. It is thus that God loves creatures; his love is at the root of their being, for by loving them, he calls them into existence, by loving them he creates good in them.
“The love of God”—says St. Thomas—“is the cause which infuses and creates good in creatures” (1,20,2). God loves with a love that is entirely gratuitous, free, and supremely pure, with a love that is at the same time benevolence which desires our good, and beneficence which does us good. By loving us God calls us to life, infuses grace in us, invites us to holiness, draws us to himself, and gives us a share in his eternal happiness. Everything we are and have is the gift of his infinite love.
As Vatican II affirms: “Man would not exist were he not created by God’s love and constantly preserved by it. And he cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and devotes himself to his Creator” (GS 19);
“I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you” (Jer 31:3). We were nothing, but God already saw us and loved us and wanted us; his love has gone before him from all eternity. No creature could exist if God had not preceded it with his love: “You love all things that exist”—says sacred Scripture—“and loath nothing of the things which you have made; for you would not have made anything if you had hated it. How would anything have endured, if you had not willed it, or how would anything not called forth by you have been preserved?” (Wis 11:24-25).
The story of our life is the story of God’s love for us. This story, once begun, never ends because God’s love has no end; sin alone, which is the rejection of divine love, has the sad possibility of interrupting it. But of himself, God loves with an infinite, eternal, immutable and most faithful love; he himself desired to express it most tenderly: “Can a woman forget her suckling child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you” (Is 49:15).
God loves us when he consoles us, but he also loves us when he afflicts us with sorrow; his graces and his consolations are love, so too are his trials and chastisements, “for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights” (Prov 3:12). In all the circumstances of life, even the saddest and most painful, we are always encompassed by divine love, which can will nothing but good, and therefore God infallibly wills our good even when he leads us by the harsh rough road of suffering. Furthermore, it is not rare for God to strike hardest those whom he loves most, “for. . . acceptable men [are tried] in the furnace of humiliation” (Sir 2:5). St. Teresa of Jesus writes: “See . . . what [suffering] he gave to the one he loved most [Jesus]. . . . These are his gifts in this world. He gives according to the love he bears us: to those he loves more, he gives more of these gifts; to those he loves less, he gives less” (Way 32:7). Even when racked with pain, the true Christian does not waver in his faith, but repeats: “we know and believe the love God has for us” (1 Jn 4:16).
How to find Answers from God
How to live in God
How to be Led
Friday, July 14, 2023
Why I’m here
In a Vision by Night
To love, to be unpretentious, to simplify my life—to go joyfully to God, seeking nothing for myself, in complete abandonment.
Never to lose sight of the intentions for which God wants me to pray, to suffer, and to act. In the midst of exterior activities and my obligations, to keep my inner attention fixed on God, to offer everything for those I love, for those Jesus desires, for the church.
To be always ready to obey the inner call of this gentle Jesus to action or to suffering, or to eternity, too, when he wills, and to reply always with joy and generosity, “Here I am, Lord, ready to do your will.” The day will come, will it not, O God, when it will be your will that I come to you, when the darkness and the sorrows shall vanish, and the burden of the body will no longer weigh on me. . . . When I have been delivered, I will love inexpressibly in you all those I will have rejoined, and those I will have left here below, when the true life will finally begin, to last forever. Blessed dawn of eternity, I greet you, not knowing whether from near or far! I must not hope for you because my only wish is to do God’s will “in life or in death.” I know that I must first climb up to Calvary and hang upon the cross before knowing union with God; I know that I possess, and hope to possess still more here below, this union through the grace of God, in a great spirit of abandonment. I wait and, like the worker who does not know when he or she will receive the final reward, I want in the meantime to fulfill my responsibilities radiantly and peacefully solely for the love of him who has done everything for me.
Elisabeth Leseur, Selected Writings
Elisabeth Leseur (1866–1914) was a devout Catholic who offered her life for the conversion of her husband, a determined atheist. After her death he edited and published her spiritual writings and went on to become a Dominican priest.
Thursday, July 6, 2023
How to Live
READ 3 There shall no more be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall worship him;...
-
The Workings of Inspiration To say that the Scriptures are inspired is to affirm that God has breathed into these writings his Spirit of Tru...
-
People do not go to hell because they are confused by the devil. People go to hell because they refuse the grace to accept God’s way of sa...
-
Mary Magdalene There are strong reasons to believe Mary Magdalene was the same Mary as the sister of Martha and Lazarus. First, there is an...