The 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.

“Now his older son was in the field, and when he came and drew close to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. He said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has received him safe and sound. And he was angry and would not go in” (Luke 15:25-28).

We are given this picture by Our Lord of the older son, full of pride, who doesn't know how to be happy when his younger brother comes home.

Initially, in this Parable of the Prodigal Son, you get the impression that the younger son is the bad guy and the older son is the good guy. But when the story goes on, you find the older one is also in need of conversion.

These two sons are not necessarily specific people, but they are more like character traits that are there in each one of us.

The older son is full of pride. He should have known better. He should have been more wise, more prudent, more humble.

The younger son is like a picture of youthfulness. He wants to go off and spend his fortune. He thinks freedom is to be out from underneath the yoke of the law, away from his father's house, and he has to learn the lessons the hard way.

But we find that the older son loves himself. We are told “his father came out and began to entreat him.” But he is not open to these entreaties by the father and these messages from the father.

We are not told that in the end, he came in to the dinner. He is a bit impervious. He doesn't allow himself to be sweet-talked by his father. This leads to a series of complaints.

“Answering his father, he said, ‘Behold, for so many years I have been serving you and I have never transgressed one of your commandments. Yet you have never given me a kid for me to make merry with my friends” (Luke 15:29).

And so, we find he is calculating. He has been counting the cost. He’s been in his father's house, but he has the mentality not of a son of the family but of a hired servant—counting the cost, thinking of himself, how hard I work, how little I complain, nobody appreciates what I do.

“For so many years I have been serving you and I have never transgressed one of your commands.” I have a good behavior record. I am a good little boy. “But you have never given me a kid to make merry with my friends.”

Ultimately, what is he complaining about? What does he want? A goat. ‘I never received a goat.’

It is all very petty. We find that this fellow is in love with himself. He doesn't love his father. He doesn't love his brother.

He is full of self-righteousness. It all seems very petty, very mean. He hasn't learned how to love.

This meditation is about the love of God.

The father in the parable symbolizes Our loving Father God. We are told that when the younger son was seen coming, “his father saw him a long way off.” He must have been looking out every day, yearning for his son to come back, a piece of his heart.

We are told, “He runs and embraces him” (Luke 15:20). He welcomes him back. In spite of all the bad things that he has done, he is full of forgiveness, full of mercy.

The older son has no mercy in his heart. He is bitter. He is hard of heart.

“Take out this heart of stone and give me a heart of flesh” (Ezek. 36:26), he could have prayed. The merciful father comes out and entreats him.

Our loving Father God asks him to change, to change his heart, to learn how to be more loving. That is what Our Father God says to us.

He comes to us in all sorts of ways, inviting us to be a more loving person: to love Him and to love others. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. ... And your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:37,39).

We could ask ourselves, How do I love God? Love is not feeling. Love is deeds (cf. 1 John 3:18).

Our Lord said, “If you love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). The one index that He gave us of how we are to love Him is in keeping His commandments, the basis of all Christian living.

That is why when we go to Confession, we have to go through those commandments and see: Where may I have offended God in not keeping His commandments? This is the baseline.

At the same time, He wants us to give ourselves completely in that love—to go over, above, and beyond ourselves; showing our love in concrete ways; appreciating the sacraments; showing our love for Our Lord with little details like those flowers on the altar—small little things with which we show our love for Jesus and for His Mother and for St. Joseph.

We make God happy by giving Him the love of our heart: our time in fulfilling the norms of our plan of life, and making time for our spiritual reading; perhaps in praying the Rosary, in showing concrete acts of love to Our Lady as we come towards her birthday this Wednesday, or other feasts of Our Lady that we have in the month of September.

There are three or four of them: The Holy Name of Mary, Our Lady of Ransom, Our Lady of Sorrows beside the Cross. It’s a very Marian month.

And so, we are called to show our love of God in concrete ways.

There are other people in the Gospel who did not rise to the occasion given to them by God to show love: the rich young man.

Our Lord said, “Go, sell all that you have. Give to the poor, and then come, follow me, and you will have treasure in heaven.”

But we are told, “He went away sad, because he had great possessions” (Matt. 19:21-22).

He seemed like a very good fellow. He seemed to ask all the right questions. But in the end, Our Lord called his bluff. He didn't really love.

He wasn't able to show his love for God with deeds because he was so attached to the few things that he had. A bit pitiful, a bit petty.

We could ask Our Lord, ‘O Lord, where do you want me to show you how much I love you? Teach me how to love you.

‘Teach me to show it with deeds, with my prayer, with my sacrifice, with my living in your presence all day long, in the way that I try to carry out my apostolate, my Christian mission, in the middle of the world; with the people that you bring me close to, the long-term friends I may have had, or the new acquaintances I make as I go through life, chance contacts of people that, maybe, I meet in the supermarket or on the street, or people that my work brings me in contact with.

‘You want me to spread the fire of the love of God to all of these people. You've placed me there to give them something, to show my love of you in the way that I look after them or try to bring them closer to you, or perhaps to change their life or to come to the sacrament of Confession,’ so that Our Lord can make those same demands on them that He wants to make on each one of us.

“Go, sell all that you have.” Show me that you love me. Show it with deeds. Show me that you're serious.

Our Lord loves those moments when we show Him with those deeds that we're really serious about what we're saying. It's easy to say. ‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’ But that's not enough for God.

Another person who didn't really show much love of God was Judas.

Judas is an interesting person to focus on in the Gospel. A lot of Holy Week focuses on Judas. He was given so many opportunities. He was exposed to so much formation. He heard the words of beauty, love, and truth falling from the lips of Jesus. He saw all the miracles.

Yet he was totally unmoved by this personification of divine love who was speaking to him on a daily basis. He walks away.

There are lessons to be learned. Our Lord gives us formation. He exposes us to love, to beauty, to truth, to wonderful things in our Church, to the sacraments, to His real presence.

And He wants us to appreciate the gift. There's a phrase in Scripture that says, “If you knew the gift of God...” (John 4:10). Sometimes we don't know the gift. We don't appreciate the gifts that God gives us.

We have to thank Him every day for those gifts: the gift of sight, the gift of hearing, the gift of our limbs, the gift of our talents, our education, our Christian formation.

It's very logical that we try to thank God with our deeds, with the spirit of sacrifice, offering things to Him. ‘I thank you, Lord, for these gifts you've given to me.’

St. Josemaría in The Forge says, “You will have as much sanctity as you have mortification done for love” (Josemaría Escrivá, The Forge, Point 1025).

He says in the Furrow, “You need a heart which is in love, not an easy life, to achieve happiness” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 795).

My Lord, give me a heart of love. Give me that heart with which you want me to love you.

Help me to show it to you in my generosity, in my self-giving, so that I give myself to you, to your plans, in the way that I accept the cross as it comes to me in my life—contradictions, setbacks, disappointments, failures.

Those are good moments to say, “Lord, if this is your will, then it's my will also” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 762). I offer it to you.

Maybe I don't understand it. Maybe in some ways, I don't want it, but I accept it. Teach me to want it, to love it. I know that from this difficult situation, you will bring great good. “All things turn out for the good for those who love God” (Rom. 8:28).

Our Lady and St. Joseph loved God and showed their love by the humble acceptance of His plans in their daily life: changes of plans, reversals of fortune, contradictions, fleeing from Herod.

In The Way of The Cross, St. Josemaría says, “Do you know how to thank Our Lord for all he has done for us? ... With love! There is no other way” (J. Escrivá, The Way of the Cross, Fifth Station).

St. Josemaría talks a lot about finesse in piety, having little details with Our Lord or with Our Lady, telling them, “Jesus, I love you, Mary, I love you, teach me how to love you more and more.”

God wants us to love Him with our hearts freely given, living our plan of life well each day: our morning offering—offering Our Lord the day, from the very first moments, the first thought of each day, and offering each hour of work, trying to finish things well, so that we don't offer Our Lord any jobs that are badly done.

We show Him our love when we try to struggle in virtue: in charity, in patience, in kindness, in our sensuality, in our honesty; when we try not to tell any lies. “The devil is the father of lies” (John 8:44).

We love God a little more when we show hatred for sin, particularly hatred for mortal sin, but also hatred for all types of sin.

Sometimes we might have a tendency to think that venial sin is okay. Little children sometimes ask, “Father, is it a mortal sin?” as though, if it's venial, then it's okay. But of course, it's the wrong question.

The question we should ask is: Is it a sin? Does it offend Our Lord? That's what we have to be free from—anything, rather than committing sin, the hatred for sin, that desire to always live in the state of grace.

Little by little we try to foster love of God in small details. Jesus, I want to show you my love for you in the way that I dust this table, or in the way that I lay this table, or in the way that I iron this shirt, or in the way that I present this particular meal, or in the way that I answer the door, or in the way that I talk to people.

I offer you this little job that I have in hand, because this is the means I have at this particular moment to offer to you.

A famous bishop who is now in the process of canonization, Fulton Sheen, tells a story of how he was standing at a bus stop in Rome one time, on his way to the Second Vatican Council. There was a man there early in the morning who was sweeping in the street.

He began to engage him in conversation.

“What time did you get up this morning?” Four o'clock.

“What time will you finish tonight?” Eight-thirty.

“How many hours will you work today?” Fourteen.

“What is your philosophy of life?”

The man said, “Well, Father, if I push this brush with more love of God than the love of God with which you are going to the Second Vatican Council, then God loves me more.” And that holy, famous bishop said he was right.

The value of our work comes not from the type of work that we’re doing, but from the love with which we do it, the virtue with which we do it, the effort we put into it—punctuality, order, attention to detail, double checking, doing it in the shortest possible time—that is, showing our love of God in the way that we work, in the way that we do things.

Like all virtues, our love of God can always grow. We can always do a little more; we can always be a little more virtuous. We can work with more faith, and more hope, and more love. We can't have too much of those virtues.

We show our love of God with our little acts of piety: visits to the Blessed Sacrament; trying to get to Mass especially on Sundays, but even during the week; trying to receive Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament as often as we can, as we try to fall in love with the beauty of divine love. Jesus Christ is divine love Incarnate.

If our heart is madly in love with Our Lord Jesus Christ, we will seek Him out in the tabernacle. Or even if we can't go physically to the church, we will say a Spiritual Communion from where we are, uniting our hearts to the heart of Christ.

We feel lost without Our God because we are made for Him. “Our hearts are restless, Lord,” said St. Augustine, “until they rest in you” (St. Augustine, Confessions).

The goal of our life is love: to love God in all things and to show that love.

It's a supernatural goal. It gives meaning and purpose to every aspect of our life so that other people, when they meet us, when they see us, when they hear from us, somehow detect the love with which we are trying to live, and they feel attracted by that.

The opposite of loving God is loving ourselves. The older brother in the parable loves himself. He's angry and he does not come in. He has no love for his father. He has no love for his brother.

He resists conversion. He refuses to change. He doesn't respond to the overtures of his father. Spoiled is the whole celebration with his love of self.

It's very easy for us to pass through life totally wrapped up in ourselves. We have to try and get that old self out, that old person that's there within us, that's very much in need of conversion.

One of the things we could try and foster is what's called rectitude of intention: having a right intention in all the things we do.

Is the glory of God the motive of all my actions? ‘Lord, I want to give you glory as I make this bed, as I mop this floor, as I clean this basin—to give you glory.’

We have to try and declare war on our own desire to be well-regarded by other people, our own desire to receive compliments or thanksgiving for the things that we have done, or to be told, ‘That's very nice’ or ‘That's very good’ so that we can give all the glory to God. Be more worried about what God thinks, rather than what other people think.

In the biographies of St. Josemaría, it said that he had no human respects. He wasn't worried about what people said about him or thought about him, because he had too many divine respects.

He was all the time concerned with: What does God think of this? How is this in His eyes?

If we spend our whole life trying to please everybody, we'll end up with nothing.

We have to have that right intention. Lift things up onto a new plane.

Love of God may help us to get over obstacles. There might be things that we find difficult to do—certain jobs, certain tasks; talking to this person, to that person; or this topic or that topic.

Logically, we all have challenges in our life, things that are difficult. But if we offer that thing to Our Lord and say, ‘Lord, I offer this thing to you, the light in your Cross, I do it for you.’ Then you'll find that thing easier to do.

Sometimes that's even getting out of bed in the morning—what St. Josemaría called the “heroic minute” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 206).

In the Furrow, he says, “‘I'm not the apostle I should be. I am too timid.’ Could it not be that you are faint-hearted, because your love is so small? It's time to change!” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 100).

A soul that is in love never says, ‘enough.’ A soul that's in love doesn't say, ‘I will love you up to here, but no further.’ A soul in love is full of unconditional love.

Our Lord wants our love unconditionally, with no conditions, no ifs or buts. No ‘I will give you this love if you give that to me.’ We're not here to bargain.

“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37). Not just with a little bit of it.

Our Lord doesn't want any stinginess. Notice how with the rich young man, when “he goes away sad, because he had great possessions,” Our Lord doesn't go after him and say, Okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Come back, come back, come back. I'll make another proposal, as long as you do it 10 percent tax-free. We'll make it easier for you.

No, Our Lord lets him go. He doesn't want stingy hearts. He wants generous hearts, people who know how to give themselves completely.

Lord, show me how you want me to love you, so that I may see that this is the most wonderful thing in the world.

As the bride of Christ, I want to fall in love with the Bridegroom. I want to prepare for that eternal wedding feast.

Some spiritual writers say that when we love something above our being, we're elevated to that level. When we love something below our being, we get lowered to that particular thing.

If we were to say, ‘You know, I really love chapati.’ Or, ‘I really love Manchester United.’ Or, ‘I really love’ some movie star. All that may lower our hearts a little bit to the things of this world. But if we try and love God, we lift ourselves up onto a new supernatural level.

This is the greatest enterprise we could have. “There's no greater thing,” said St. Thomas, “than to contemplate the divine.”

To love the divine—it lifts us up out of our human situation and it's for that that we have been created.

St. Augustine had a phrase where he said, “Late have I loved you” (St. Augustine, Confessions). Very beautiful.

We may not feel that we love God. It might not be very obvious to us. But it's the goal of our life. And if we work in that direction, some day we will come to see that I really do love God. I love Jesus Christ. I love Our Lady and St. Joseph. Even if this has taken me decades, or my whole life, that's the treasure we have to try and seek after.

When we see the love that God has for us, we have to try and correspond to that love.

When Our Lord appeared to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, inviting her to foster devotion to His Sacred Heart, He said those famous words, “Behold this heart that has loved men so much.”

Christ has poured out His heart in love, during His public life, and particularly on the Cross, allowing His heart to be pierced by a lance. Blood and water flowed out of the fountain of the sacramental life of the Church.

“Behold this heart that has loved men so much”—which was willing to be on the Cross, to die for them.

“All I get back in return,” He said, “are insults. And sometimes it is those who are most consecrated to me that insult me most.”

And so, when we enter into the heart of Christ that has loved men so much, it can fill us with the desire to love Him a little more and a little better in our life—not to be stingy—to give ourselves to the Bridegroom completely, to pay more attention to the formation that God gives us, so that we make up for Judas, and we don't become like a Judas.

We make sure that the ideas that Our Lord gives us with His divine grace go deep into our souls. Change our life, change our heart. Make us into a more loving person.

We want to have a heart-to-heart relationship with Jesus. “Love is repaid with love,” said St. Josemaría (J. Escrivá, The Way of the Cross, Fifth Station).

But the real proof of affection is given by sacrifice. “Take courage, deny yourself, and take up his cross” (Luke 9:23). Then you will be sure you are returning Him love for love.

We could ask ourselves the question, Have I ever stuck out my neck for Jesus Christ? Did anybody ever chop it off? Have I ever suffered for Christ in some way, because of the things I said or did?

Have I made a difference in this world or in life? Or in other people's lives, putting all my effort into the sacrifice that may be necessary?

“No matter how much you may love,” he says, “you will never love enough. The human heart is endowed with an enormous coefficient of expansion” (J. Escrivá, The Way of the Cross, Eighth Station).

Our hearts can grow and grow and grow to love God more. The saints talked about love of God in very powerful ways.

“When it loves, it opens out in a crescendo of affection that overcomes all barriers. If you love Our Lord, there will be no single creature that does not find a place in your heart” (ibid.).

We grow in love of God, we love other people more, everybody, no matter who they are or where they come from.

God will shape our hearts to be like His. That’s a great program for the whole of our life.

He says in The Forge, “Please don't let yourself become bourgeois. If you do, you will be a hindrance. You will become a dead weight for others in the apostolate and, above all, a source of suffering for the Heart of Christ. You must not stop doing apostolate, nor must you abandon your effort to do your work as best you can, nor neglect your life of piety. —God will do the rest” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 936).

We could turn to Our Lady, she who showed her love for God in concrete ways. She gave God a blank check.

“Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

Whatever it is you want, I'm here for it. I'm up to it. I'm ready for it. The sky is the limit.

Mary, as we come to your birthday this coming Wednesday [September 8], may we ask you for that grace to be able to give ourselves to you with love in the same way that you give yourself to God, Our Father.

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