The Infinite Love of God

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

We're told in Psalm 86, “There is none like you, Lord. So great you are, so marvelous are your doings; you who alone are God” (Ps. 86:8,10).

And in St. Matthew, we're told, “Behold, I am with you through all the days that are coming, until the consummation of the world” (Matt. 28:20).

In various places in Scripture, Our Lord speaks to us about the infinite love of God for each person. God lets us know this in various ways.

He assures us that although a mother might forget about the child of her womb, He will never forget about us. “For he leads us by the hand,” we're told in the Book of Isaiah, “so as to have us always within sight” (Isa. 49:15-16).

In the prophet Hosea, there's a moving witness to the triumph of God's love over the repeated infidelities and hypocritical conversions of His people. Israel at last recognizes that human alliances will not save her, nor will man-made gods, nor empty holocausts, but love, expressed in faithfulness to the Covenant.

It's then that there is a glimmer of light and a glimpse of happiness without limit.

That conversion itself is the fruit of God's love, for everything is born of Him, who loves us with great generosity.

We're told, “I will bring healing to their crushed spirits: in free mercy, I will give them back my love; my vengeance has passed them by. I will be morning dew, to make Israel grow as the lilies grow, strike roots deep as the forest of Lebanon. Those branches shall spread; it shall become fair as a garden of olives, fragrant as cedar of Lebanon.

“None that dwells under the protection of that name but shall come back to me; corn shall be theirs in plenty, and they will prosper in growth like one of their own vineyards, farmed as the vintage of Lebanon itself” (Hos. 14:5-8).

We can never imagine how much God loves us. In order to save us, when we were lost, He sent His only-begotten Son, so that, in giving up His life, He would redeem us from the state we had fallen into.

St. John tells us, “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that those who believe in him may not perish” (John 3:16).

This very love moves Him to give Himself to us in a habitual way, dwelling in our soul in grace.

We're told in St. John, “If a man has any love for me, he will be true to my word, and then he will win my Father's love, and we will then both come to him, and make our continual abode with him” (John 14:23).

And Our Lord communicates with us in the intimacy of our hearts, both during these periods of prayer and also throughout the day.

St. John of Chrysostom says, “I am a friend, an associate and head, and a brother and sister, and a mother; I am everything, and all I want is an intimate friendship with you. I have become poor for you, a beggar for you, been crucified for you, buried in a sepulcher for you; in heaven I intercede before God the Father for you; and on earth I am his ambassador to you. You are everything to me, brother, co-heir, friend, and associate. What more do you want?” (St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on St. Matthew).

What more could we want? When we contemplate Our Lord in each one of the scenes of The Way of the Cross, these words easily come to our lips from the heart: “To know that you love me so much, my God, and yet...I have not lost my mind (Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, Point 425).

In Psalm 86 we're told, “There is none like you, Lord. So great you are, so marvelous are your doings. You alone are God” (Ps. 86:8,10).

Our Lord's mercy is shown even when we offend Him. One of the greatest marvels is the love He has for us. He loves us with a singular and personal love, each one of us, separately, in particular.

He has never stopped loving us, helping us, protecting us, talking to us. He has never stopped being kind to us, loving us, and respecting us, each one of us separately, in particular. He has never stopped loving us, helping us, protecting us, talking to us—not even when we have been most ungrateful or committed the most serious sins.

It is, perhaps, on such occasions that we have received the most attention from God as in the parables where He wished to express His mercy in a singular way: the lost sheep is the only one carried on the shoulders (Luke 15:5), the feast is laid on by the father for the one of his sons who has hurt him most (Luke 15:23-24), the lost drachma is carefully sought by its owner until she finds it (Luke 15:8-9).

God's attention to and His love for us has been constant throughout our lives. He has been aware of all the circumstances and events which we have had to live through. He is beside us in every situation and at every moment.

We’re told in St. Matthew, “Behold, I am with you all through the days that are coming, until the consummation of the world” (Matt. 28:20), until the final moments of our lives.

How often He has continued an apparently chance meeting! In joy and in sorrow, through what at first sight seemed a misfortune, in a friend, in a colleague at work, in a priest who has looked after us…

In St. Josemaría’s Christ Is Passing By, Point 59, it says, “Just think about the wonder of God's love. Our Lord comes out to meet us, he waits for us, he’s by the roadside where we cannot but see him, and he calls each of us personally, speaking to us about our concerns—which are also his. He stirs us to sorrow, opens our conscience to be generous; he encourages us to want to be faithful, so that we can be called his disciples.”

As a sign of His love, He has left us the sacraments, channels of divine mercy. Among them, since we can receive some of the sacraments more frequently, what pleases Him in a special way is the sacrament of Confession, where He pardons our sins, and the Blessed Sacrament, where He has desired to remain in a most singular act of love for men.

It is for love of us that He has given His Mother to be Our Mother. He has said, I will serve you because “I came to serve and not to be served” (Matt. 20:28).

As a sign of that love, He has also given us an angel who protects us. He advises us and showers us with a host of favors until we reach the end of our passage on earth, when He awaits us with the promised heaven, a happiness without end and without limit. There we have had a place prepared for us.

We can say, ‘Lord, fill us with the power of your love. As we share in the Eucharist, may we come to know fully the redemption we have received.’

We can try to give thanks for so much love, for such loving care, which we do not merit in any way. We can try to set ourselves aflame with desires to please Him. “Love is repaid with love” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 686).

Uri igne Sancti Spiritus! Enkindle in our hearts the fire of your love (Prayer to the Holy Spirit).

Francesca Javiera del Valle, in her book About the Holy Spirit, said, “Had I a million lives I would give them to possess you, and a thousand...a thousand more would I give...to love you, if I were able to...with this love, pure and strong, with which you, being who you are...love us continuously.”

What about our response? The first commandment: to love the Lord Our God in the little incidents of each day.

The Gospel tells us, “One of the scribes came up to Jesus and put a question to him: ‘Which is the first of all the commandments?’ Jesus replied, ‘This is the first: Listen, Israel, the Lord our God is the one Lord, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mark 12:28-30).

Our Lord expects from each one of us an unconditional response to His love for us.

Our love for God is shown in a thousand and one little incidents of each day: we love God through our work well done, the way we live our family life, our social dealings, the use we make of our leisure time. Everything can be converted into a deed of love.

In Friends of God, Point 296, St. Josemaría says, “While we carry out as perfectly as we can (with all our mistakes and limitations) the tasks allotted to us by our situation and duties, our soul longs to escape. It is drawn towards God like iron drawn by a magnet. One begins to love Jesus in a more effective way, with the sweet and gentle surprise of his encounter.”

When we rise to respond to God's love, the obstacles disappear; on the other hand, without love, even the tiniest difficulties may seem insuperable. When there is union with Our Lord, everything becomes tolerable.

St. Augustine says, “While all sorts of setbacks are encountered as difficult by those who do not love; those who do love, on the contrary, find them trivial and easily manageable. There is no suffering, however cruel or violent it may be, which is not made bearable or even reduced to nothing by love.”

Cheerfulness, maintained even in the midst of difficulties, is the clearest sign that the love of God informs all our actions. For, comments St. Augustine, “he who loves either does not feel the difficulty or he loves the very difficulty itself. The works of those who love are never distressing.”

Our love for God has to be supreme and absolute. Within this love all the noble loves of the earth find their place, according to the vocation each one has received, and each one fits in and is accommodated with naturalness.

Pope John Paul I said, “It would not be fair to say ‘either God or man.’ We ought to love ‘God and man.’ Love for the latter should never be more than for God, or opposed to God, or equal to the love for God. In other words, love for God is certainly dominant, but it is not exclusive.

“The Bible declares Jacob to be holy (Dan. 3:35) and loved by God (Mal. 1:2; Rom. 9:13). This is shown by the seven years he spent winning over Rachel to be his wife. Those years “seemed to him to be very few; such was his love for her” (Gen. 29:20).

“St. Francis de Sales comments on this: ‘Jacob,’ he says, ‘loved Rachel with all his might, and with all his might did he love God. But he did not love Rachel in the way he loved God, nor did he love God in the way he did Rachel.

“He loved God as his God, as more than all things and more than he loved himself. He loved Rachel as his wife above all other women and as he loved himself. He loved God with an absolute and sovereign love, and Rachel with his conjugal love.

“One love is not contrary to the other, because his love for Rachel did not impede the supreme transcendence of his love for God.’” (John Paul I, General Audience, September 27, 1978).

Our love for God is necessarily shown in our love for others. The way we love God is shown in the way we live charity with those who are beside us in our day-to-day lives.

“In this will they know that you are my disciples” (John 13:35): in our refinement in dealings with others, in mutual respect, in thinking in a way more favorable to others, in helping out in the little things at home or at work, in a loving and appropriate fraternal correction, in prayer for the one who needs it most.

A few days after Our Lord's Resurrection, some of His disciples met together by the Sea of Tiberias in Galilee, obeying the instructions which the risen Jesus had given them. They had gone back to their work as fishermen. Among them were John and Peter (John 21:3).

Our Lord went to look for His friends. The Gospel paints a moving picture of Jesus with the men who, in spite of everything, had remained faithful.

“He passes by,” says St. Josemaría, “close to his apostles, close to those souls who have given themselves to him, and they don't realize that he is there. How often Christ is not only near us, but in us; yet we still live in such a human way!

“The disciples recall what they have heard so often from their Master's lips: fishers of men, apostles. And they realize that all things are possible, because it is he who is directing their fishing” (J. Escrivá, Friends of God, Points 265-266).

We’re told, “Whereupon the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, ‘It is the Lord.’ Love is farsighted. Love is the first to appreciate kindness.

“The adolescent apostle, who felt a deep and firm affection for Jesus, because he loved Christ with all the purity and tenderness of a heart that had never been corrupted, exclaimed, ‘It is the Lord!’ Simon Peter, hearing him say that it was the Lord, girded up his fisherman's coat, and sprang into the sea (John 21:7).

“Peter personifies faith. Full of marvelous daring, he leaps into the sea. With a love like John's and a faith like Peter's, what is there that can stop us?” (J. Escrivá, Friends of God, Points 265-266).

“It is the Lord!” This cry has to rise from our hearts too, in the middle of our work, when we are ill, in all our dealings with the people who share our lives.

We can ask St. John to teach us to recognize Christ's face in the middle of all the realities that surround us, because He is very near to us and He alone is able to give meaning to all the things that we do.

In addition to what we learn from Sacred Scripture, Tradition hands down to us some details which confirm the great care which St. John took to preserve the purity of doctrine and his faithfulness to the commandment of fraternal love.

St. Jerome tells us that when John was a very old man, he repeated again and again to the disciples who came to see him, “Little children, love one another.”

They asked him why he always went on repeating the same thing. St. John answered, “It is the Lord's commandment, and if that is kept, it is enough” (St. Jerome, Commentary on Galatians).

Love that is true, whether the senses have a part in it or not, includes all aspects of our existence, in a true unity of life. It leads us “to insert God into everything, which otherwise would be insipid without him. A pious person,” says St. Josemaría, “whose piety is not superficial, strives to fulfill his duty.

“Sincere devotion leads to work, to the willing fulfillment of the duties of each day—even when this is hard. There is an intimate union between this interior supernatural reality and the external manifestations of human activity.

“Professional work, human relationships of friendship and companionship, striving—shoulder to shoulder with our fellow citizens—to achieve the well-being and progress of society, are the natural fruits, a logical consequence, of this sap of Christ which is the life of our soul” (J. Escrivá, In memoriam).

False piety does not make any impact on the ordinary life of a Christian. It doesn't become transformed into improved behavior or into helping others.

The fulfillment of the will of God in the duties—generally small—of every day is the most sure guide for the Christian who has to find holiness in the midst of earthly realities.

There are many different ways in which these duties can be carried out: with resignation, like somebody who has no alternative but to do them; accepting them, which involves a deeper and more thoughtful commitment; agreeably, wanting what God wants, because, even though it may not be seen at this moment, the Christian knows that God is Our Father and that He wants the best for His children; or even better, with complete abandonment, embracing the will of God at all times, without laying down any limits whatever.

This last is what Our Lord asks from us: to love Him without any conditions, without waiting for more favorable situations, in the ordinary things of every day, and if He should so permit, in more difficult and extraordinary circumstances.

St. Josemaría says, “As soon as you truly abandon yourself in the Lord, you will know how to be content with whatever happens. You will not lose your peace if your undertakings do not turn out the way you hoped, even if you have put everything into them, and used all the means necessary. For they will have turned out the way God wants them to” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 860).

With the words of a prayer that the Church suggests to us for use after Mass, we could say to Our Lord: “I want whatever you want, I want because you want, I want as you want, I want as long as you want” (Pope Clement XI, The Universal Prayer).

Our Lady, who pronounced and put into practice that “be it done unto me according to your word” (Luke 1:38), will help us to respond to the love of God in everything we do.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

EW