Love, something that is misunderstood in today’s day in age. As I mentioned in my last post about unconditional love, the complete self-donating love that springs from God is missing. The question is why? Let me offer some reflection. Our world places a premium on the material, the immediate, and the physical. Absent from this is the Spiritual, delayed gratification, fasting, and those things that are supernatural. We seek to replace God’s love with love of the world and worldly things.
God’s love is so deep, a complete abyss of love that we can never reach the bottom. Our hearts so thirst and cry out for this love. There is nothing else that can fill this gap in our hearts. There is an inscription written on our hearts when we were created by God, and this is the longing, the calling of our hearts for God. We must seek God with all our hearts; seek His love for us, because "God is Love" (1 Jn 4:8) and love is his first gift, containing all others. "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." (Rom 5:5) (CCC 733) This is a love that excludes no one; everyone is welcome at the table of the Lord. If we look to our hearts we know this to be true, when we fill it with things of the world, it may be full for a short period but each day it needs to be refilled. God fills that hole with His love till it overflows and explodes out of us. God’s love explodes out of us in our works. When we know the love of God deep in our hearts we cannot help but do the works of mercy.
As deep cries out to deep so our heart cries out for God and when it is not filled with Him we are not fulfilled. This is seen so often in today’s world where love is a finite concept. Love is not finite but infinite. If you have ever read the: Chronicles of Narnia the end of the last book ends with the children running in Aslan’s land and the call is this, Farther up and deeper in. As they run farther up and deeper in the land grows larger and this is the analogy for God’s love. The farther we delve into the depth of God’s love the bigger it gets, it is infinite. This is where all love springs from, the complete and infinite love of God. The constant sharing of Trinity, The Father begetting the Son and between the love of the two of them they spirate the Holy Spirit, the breath of God that comes to dwell in all of us.
We need to learn to pray to God in love. God's love has no bounds, neither should our prayer. (see note 52) Praying "our" Father opens to us the dimensions of his love revealed in Christ: praying with and for all who do not yet know him, so that Christ may "gather into one the children of God." (CCC 2793)
The Word became flesh so that thus we might know God's love: "In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him." (1 Jn 4:9) "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." (Jn 3:16)(CCC 458)
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