Jesus: Perfect Love

Love of God

Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, provides us with His two central commandments: Love of God and Love of Neighbor.  On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets.  [Mt 22:40]  It is a summary of The Decalogue.

Jesus tells us the greatest and first commandment is Hear, O Isreal: the Lord thy God is one God and, to love God with thy whole heart, soul, mind, and strength.  [Mk 12:29-30]  The Lord addresses this with the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and they know this law very well.  Still, they are regularly tempting Him and challenging Him.  They would prefer to move on and discuss other subjects such as the resurrection, David's son and legal matters rather than the importance of the love of God.  Jesus was there to teach and be obeyed.

How often do we do this?  Jesus warns His audience not to change the subject away from our attention on God's Love.  Jesus wants to share the priceless gift of God's love and to draw His people closer to Him.

God is charity: and he that abideth in charity abideth in God, and God in him.  [1 Jn 4:16]  Charity is love.  Charity originates with God.  Charity is an infused supernatural virtue.  And Jesus is the expression of God's love for us.  The classic understanding of Christian charity is the love of God for the sake of God; Himself.

Man is the most perfect part of creation, the soul is the most perfect part of man, love is the perfection of the soul, and the perfection of love is the Love of God; so that the Love of God may be defined as the end, the perfection of the universe.  And this explains the preeminence of that which our Lord called the first and great commandment."  (Love of God, p. 318)

Yes, God loves us!  He loves us with an eternal love, which has neither beginning nor end, neither succession nor vicissitude.  We are eternal in His love.  From all eternity before we had any existence, God had conceived us in His thought, willed us in His decrees, and it was a thought and, a decree of love!  (Divine Eucharist, p. 77)

God addresses St. Catherine

St. Catherine of Siena was a fourteenth-century mystic, ascetic, Dominican tertiary, and is a declared Doctor of the Church.  Her work, The Dialogue, is an extraordinary dictation of the words of God the Father to her while in a state of ecstasy.  She is also a model of intercessory prayer.

Described below, God is addressing St. Catherine regarding the union of the soul, through love, with God:

Open the eye of your intellect, and gaze into Me, and you shall see the beauty of My rational creature.  And look at those creatures who, among the beauties which I have given to the soul, creating her in My image and similitude, are clothed with the nuptial garment (that is, the garment of love), adorned with many virtues, by which they are united with Me through love.  And yet I tell you, if you should ask Me, who these are, I should reply (said the sweet and amorous Word of God) they are another Myself, inasmuch as they have lost and denied their own will, and are clothed with Mine, are united to Mine, are conformed to Mine.  It is therefore true, indeed, that the soul unites herself with God by the affection of love."  (Dialogue, p. 14)

Further, only God can satisfy us, His creature (since all else is a manifestation of self-love):

Man is placed above all creatures, and not beneath them, and he cannot be satisfied or content except in something greater than himself.  Greater than himself there is nothing but Myself, the Eternal God.  Therefore I alone can satisfy him, and, because he is deprived of this satisfaction by his guilt, he remains in continual torment and pain.  Weeping follows pain, and when he begins to weep, the wind strikes the tree of self-love, which he has made the principle of all his being.  (Dialogue, p. 84-85)

If we are willing to hear and learn, God does teach us the difference between His Truth and error.  And Jesus shows us the consequences of our choices.

The Bride and The Bridegroom

St. John of the Cross, mystic, poet, and theologian, comments on the Canticle of Canticles, concerning the love the Bridegroom demands which is to make the beloved ones resemble each other.

And therefore He saith to her, 'Put Me as a seal upon thy heart' [Cant. 8:6] — where the arrows strike that are shot forth from the quiver of love, that is, the actions and motives of love — so that all the arrows of love might strike Him, being there as a target for them, and that all may thus reach Him, and the soul become like unto Him through the actions and motives of love until it becomes transformed in Him.  (Ascent, p. 274)

The call for Christ to transform us and to fully live in us.

From the Cure of Ars

St. John Marie Vianney, Patron of Parish Priests and Cure of Ars, is a saint of immense force.  A French priest (o. 1815) with an enormous love for the Blessed Sacrament and the Blessed Virgin Mary.  He completely transformed his parish with his focus on the sacraments.  Tens of thousands flocked to this beloved servant of God for reconciliation and guidance.  Here the saint speaks of the love and glory of God; and the salvation of souls:

Man, being created by love, cannot live with out love: either he loves God, or he loves himself and he loves the world.  See, my children, it is faith that we want. When we have not faith, we are blind.  He who does not see, does not know; he who does not know, does not love; he who does not love God loves himself, and at the same time loves his pleasures.  He fixes his heart on things which pass away like smoke.  He cannot know the truth, nor any good thing; he can know nothing but false hood, because he has no light; he is in a mist.  If he had light, he would see plainly that all that he loves can give him nothing but eternal death; it is a foretaste of hell.  (Spirit, p. 40)

Agreeing with the Cure of Ars, St. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage informs us that: Whatever a man prefers to God, that he makes a god to himself.  Ever since Adam's sin, man has had a problem with putting God first.  Commenting on bad servants, St. Thomas Aquinas says, they do not know what God does in us.

Mystics of the Church are those contemplative souls who seek God in themselves, and they eventually find Him.  St. Teresa of Jesus, Carmelite nun, was one such mystic.  She asks the following question which is relevant for all of us: Are we seeking ourselves in God; or, are we seeking God in ourselves?  Fallen man seeks the former, with bad consequences.

St. Augustine eventually looked inside himself, during his personal pilgrimage, and found God; which produced amazing spiritual fruits.  The love of Jesus offers all of us this opportunity.  Our reason, or soul, is the very temple of God, Who dwells therein.  'I sought Thee without,'  S. Augustine says, 'and found Thee not, because Thou wert within me.'  (Love of God, p. 29)

God alone can satisfy our desire for love.  For I am the Lord thy God, a jealous God.  [Deut. 5:9]  He is the source of all love.  The salvation of souls is at stake, and God and His saints want to help us make the correct choice.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux

St. Bernard of Clairvaux, mystic, preacher, Cistercian monk, French Abbot, and a Doctor of the Church, in the twelfth-century, explains the reason to love God:

The motive for loving God, is God.  No title can be stronger than this: God gave Himself to us in spite of our unworthiness, and, being God, what could He give us of greater worth than Himself?  If, then, by asking, why we are bound to love God, we mean, what is His claim, the answer is: Especially this, that He first loved us.  This gives Him a right to our love in return; above all, considering who He is that loves, what His loved ones are, and in what way He loves them.  (Saint Bernard, p. 3-4)

We must love the triune God in all things.  We must return God's love with love.  How do I please God with my love?  One way is to avoid sin.  Another is with virtues.  Think of the things of heaven; think of the things of God.  [Col. 3:2]

On Loving and Serving God

Fr. Franz Hunolt, S.J. was a German Catholic priest and preacher in the eighteenth-century, and speaks of how God is our Lord, therefore we should serve Him and love Him with our whole hearts.

God, who is infinitely beautiful, who is infinitely perfect, and in Himself worthy of all love; in whom there is nothing that can be hated, nothing that must not be esteemed and loved!  What reason that has but the least inkling of this will not be at once forced to esteem and love this Good, and therefore to serve Him with all possible diligence?  God, the best and most generous Lord, who showers benefits on us every moment of our lives!  What heart can be so ungrateful as not to honor and love Him?  God, our supreme, only, and true good, whom we hope and desire to possess one day forever in heaven; in whom alone we can find all that can satisfy us!  What man is there, who loves his own happiness, who should not adore this Good, and love Him and serve Him faithfully?  And yet, God, Thou art forced to command us, saying: The Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and Him only shalt thou serve!"  (Good Christian, p. 27)

To  know God is to love Him

For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son: that whosoever believeth in him may not perish, but may have life everlasting.  [Jn 3:16]

Of all the Infallibly Declared Dogmas of the Catholic Faith, the first fifty-three dogmas describe God.  The first five dogmas are as follows:

1. God, Our Creator and Lord, can be known with certainty, by the natural light of reason from created things.

2. God’s existence is not merely an object of natural rational knowledge, but also an object of supernatural faith.

3. God’s Nature is incomprehensible to men.

4. The blessed in Heaven posses an immediate intuitive knowledge of the Divine Essence.

5. The Immediate Vision of God transcends the natural power of cognition of the human soul, and is therefore supernatural.

St. Francis de Sales says, that with God, His Perfection is Simple and Infinite, and it is one sole and purely simple Act—even His Own Divine Essence, Eternal, Unchanging.  (Love of God, p. 43)

The saints tell us, to know God is to love Him.  St. Bernard of Clairvaux says this is a process which requires self-knowledge:

There is no attaining to God without self-knowledge; for from such knowledge alone come humility and the fear of God, which is the beginning of salvation as well as of wisdom.  But you must also know God; for how shall we love Him if we do not know Him, possess Him if we do not love Him?  To know yourself is to fear God; to know Him is to love Him.  The one is the beginning of wisdom, the other of perfection.  Ignorance on these points is fatal.  All other knowledge is indifferent.  We are not saved by having it, nor lost for want of it.  (St. Bernard, p. 102)

God instructs St. Catherine on self-knowledge

God shows the way to perfect love of Himself is through true self-knowledge.  This way: to correct and chastise the movements of thy heart with true self-knowledge, and with hatred and distaste for thy imperfection.

"So do, then, that thou lovest everything in God, and correct every inordinate affection.  Make two homes for thyself, my daughter.  One actual home in thy cell, that thou go not running about into many places, unless for necessity, or for obedience to the prioress, or for charity's sake; and another spiritual home, which thou art to carry with thee always—the cell of true self-knowledge, where thou shalt find within thyself knowledge of the goodness of God.  These are two cells in one, and when abiding in the one it behoves thee to abide in the other, for otherwise the soul would fall into either confusion or presumption.  For didst thou rest in knowledge of thyself, confusion of mind would fall on thee; and didst thou abide in the knowledge of God alone, thou wouldst fall into presumption.  The two, then, must be built together and made one same thing; if thou dost this, thou wilt attain perfection.  For from self-knowledge thou wilt gain hatred of thine own fleshliness, and through hate thou wilt become a judge, and sit upon the seat of thy conscience, and pass judgment; and thou wilt not let a fault go without giving sentence on it.  From such knowledge flows the stream of humility; which never seizes on mere report, nor takes offence at anything, but bears every insult, every loss of consolation, and every sorrow, from