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 find Answers from God

seek the answer in God’s grace, 

not in doctrine; 

in the longing of the will, 

not in the understanding; 

in the sighs of prayer, 

not in research; 

seek the bridegroom 

not the teacher; 

God 

and not man; 

How to live in God

From the Journey of the Mind to God by Saint Bonaventure

Mystical wisdom is revealed by the Holy Spirit

Christ is both the way and the door. Christ is the staircase and the vehicle, like the throne of mercy over the Ark of the Covenant, and the mystery hidden from the ages. A man should turn his full attention to this throne of mercy, and should gaze at him hanging on the cross, full of faith, hope and charity, devoted, full of wonder and joy, marked by gratitude, and open to praise and jubilation. Then such a man will make with Christ a pasch, that is, a passing-over. Through the branches of the cross he will pass over the Red Sea, leaving Egypt and entering the desert. There he will taste the hidden manna, and rest with Christ in the sepulcher, as if he were dead to things outside. He will experience, as much as is possible for one who is still living, what was promised to the thief who hung beside Christ: Today you will be with me in paradise.

For this passover to be perfect, we must suspend all the operations of the mind and we must transform the peak of our affections, directing them to God alone. This is a sacred mystical experience. It cannot be comprehended by anyone unless he surrenders himself to it; nor can he surrender himself to it unless he longs for it; nor can he long for it unless the Holy Spirit, whom Christ sent into the world, should come and inflame his innermost soul. Hence the Apostle says that this mystical wisdom is revealed by the Holy Spirit.

If you ask how such things can occur, seek the answer in God’s grace, not in doctrine; in the longing of the will, not in the understanding; in the sighs of prayer, not in research; seek the bridegroom not the teacher; God and not man; darkness not daylight; and look not to the light but rather to the raging fire that carries the soul to God with intense fervor and glowing love. The fire is God, and the furnace is in Jerusalem, fired by Christ in the ardor of his loving passion. Only he understood this who said: My soul chose hanging and my bones death. Anyone who cherishes this kind of death can see God, for it is certainly true that: No man can look upon me and live.

Let us die, then, and enter into the darkness, silencing our anxieties, our passions and all the fantasies of our imagination. Let us pass over with the crucified Christ from this world to the Father, so that, when the Father has shown himself to us, we can say with Philip: It is enough. We may hear with Paul: My grace is sufficient for you; and we can rejoice with David, saying: My flesh and my heart fail me, but God is the strength of my heart and my heritage for ever. Blessed be the Lord for ever, and let all the people say: Amen. Amen!

How to be Led

1.   Complete deflation of ego. 

2.   Dependence and guidance from God.

3.   Moral Inventory.

4.   Confession.

5.   Restitution.

6.   Serve the Lord as He leads.

Why I’m here

Why I’m here:

We are here to learn to worship and get ready for the new Heaven and earth. 

Worship is sacrifice. 

We are to imitate Jesus. 

Be baptized. 

Go into the desert to be tempted. 

Temptation grows Faith. 

Obedience is learned through suffering. 

Doing Gods Holy Will not our own thoughts and desires. 

Liturgy of Mass is going to cross and getting instruction and food that is Jesus. 

Learning to live and please Him. 

Blessing the earth with the Lord’s Truth and Goodness, even though they will hate us for it, or be granted repentance and be saved. 

Dying brings us to eternal glory. 

Earth will be remade and we will be perfected and raised to live in new Earth. 

This life is the battle ground growing you into maturity for new perfect Earth. 

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.

How to Live

It’s about being with you God

Not thinking about you God

The Bible is to ME to guide ME

Not about how you work with others

Work out your OWN salvation 

Think about being with Him

And what You are saying to me

Not about others and what You are doing with them (what’s it to you)

Wash my sin and others off me with the blood

And walk in newness of life with no sin from or on me from others (forgiveness)-freedom!

Chosen and elect for special mission FOR the church others are to be IN the church. Even the Chosen Jews did not Cling to Him, they clung to ideas of Him). 

No guarantees for either to make it…symbiotic relationship. Must Cling tight to God. (Who He says He is, not who you want or think He is). 

You want a people to be Holy and Worship as a way of life. This is what will free the soul to be happy and free.