FEEL LOVED BY GOD
1. Feeling loved by God
Our faith becomes alive when we experience that we are deeply loved by God.
"Then the Pharisees, having heard that he had closed the mouths of the Sadducees, gathered together, and one of them, a doctor of the Law, questioned him to test him: “Teacher, in the Law, what is the great commandment?” He answered him: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. The second then is similar to that: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Mt 22:34-40).
We all know that love is the main and the only commandment that Jesus teaches us. The early Christians recognised themselves in the way they loved and in the way they related to one another. It is indeed providential to take up this theme of ‘the LOVE of God and the LOVE of others’ at the beginning of our formation this year. We could not begin in a more evangelical, more fundamental and more Marian way. Let us ask the Lord with faith and conviction, every day of this journey, to help us experience his love as a Father, his unconditional love. It would be important for each of us to repeat every morning, every evening and every moment of the day this profound, intimate and heartfelt prayer: “Lord, help me to experience your paternal love”.
Our faith will remain a theory, a pure theology or only disembodied doctrine if it does not descend at every moment into our hearts and from there become life. By his incarnation, Jesus wanted to take on our human condition and bring us into relationship with God. It was a choice of love by the Father who from the beginning did not cease to love us and to show us this continuously. This is why I invite you to let yourselves be guided by the Word of God in this month’s formative moment. Read and re-read, but above all pray the text of Matthew 22: 34-40 and ask yourselves: “How do I love the Lord? How do I love others? How can my love grow this year, beginning with my family, my children, my community, my friends and people that the Lord will put along my path?”
The question “Master, in the Law, what is the great commandment?” posed by a Pharisees to test Jesus becomes the core of the catechesis for his disciples. Perhaps, you too have some questions to ask Jesus and some doubts to clarify, you want to open your heart to him so that he can answer you simply, deeply and gently. Jesus wants to love you completely, entirely. Let Jesus love you. Open yourself to the Father’s love through the presence of His Spirit. Put yourself in the presence of the Lord, invoking the Holy Spirit with your words so that this encounter may be an encounter of love, to savour Love and learn to LOVE by putting yourself in His presence, following the paths indicated to us by St. Francis de Sales:
The first is a lively and attentive awareness of God’s omnipresence: God is in everything and everywhere and there is no place or thing in this world that does not manifest His presence.
The second is to think that God is present not only where you are but also in a special way in your heart and in the depths of your spirit.
The third is to think of our Saviour, who, in his own humanity, sees from heaven all the people of the earth and especially those who are in prayer.
The fourth is to think of our Saviour close to us in his humanity, just as our friends are close to us.
1.1 Created by God’s love to love
God created us because he loves us through his free and disinterested love. This was the first way and sign of God’s love for each one of us: to create us. We were created by LOVE. We are the fruit of God’s Love. God need not have created us. Instead, He gave us the gift of life; He could have pronounced another name. Instead, He wanted to pronounce ours; He could have taken another path, instead, He chose us, He thought of us, He loved us. When a man loves, his heart overflows, and the more he loves, the closer he comes to the heart of God. A heart that loves, shares its joy with others and this is the good wish of its Creator. God created us for an ‘overflow’ of his love. He wanted to share his infinite joy with us so that we would be immensely happy because we are creatures of his love.
The true source of joy is love:
“The source of Christian joy is the certainty of being loved by God, of being loved personally by our Creator... with a passionate and faithful love, a love that is greater than our infidelity and our sins, with a love that forgives” (Benedict XVI). And the fullest, purest and truest love we will ever experience and receive is God’s love.
We are on earth to know and love God, to do good according to his will, that is, to LOVE and to one day reach Paradise. We are pilgrims of faith because we come from God and go towards God. We have a more remote origin than our parents. We come from God in whom resides all the happiness of heaven and earth, and we are awaited in his eternal and unlimited bliss. Meanwhile we live on earth. Sometimes we experience the nearness of our Creator and at other times we struggle to feel His presence in our lives. For us to find our way home without getting lost, God has sent us His Son who has freed us from sin, saved us from all evil and leads us infallibly to true life. He is “the way, the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6).
God has placed in our hearts the desire to seek him and to find him. St Augustine says: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you”. It is natural for human beings to seek God. Our whole search for truth and happiness is ultimately a search for that which sustains us, satisfies us and claims us absolutely. Man is fully himself only when he has found God. “He who seeks truth seeks God, whether he is aware of it or not” (St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross - Edith Stein).
1.2. God’s love is concrete and sensitive
We all know that God revealed himself because He wanted to be known. God was not obliged to reveal himself to humans but did so out of love. Just as in human love we can only know something of the person we love when he opens his heart to us, we know something of God’s innermost thoughts only because the eternal and mysterious God opened himself to us out of love. From the creation, through the patriarchs and prophets, to the final revelation in the Son Jesus Christ, God has spoken to humanity continuously. In Jesus, he has opened his heart to us and made clear his innermost being for all time. It is up to each of us to recognise that divine revelation is a sign of God’s universal love for humanity in the history of our world. It may be a bit distant for us but our faith helps us to do so. It would be interesting to retrace God’s revelation in the Old Testament by remembering how many signs, pledges and gestures of love he performed with our ancestors in faith.
He called Abraham to make him the ‘father of a multitude of peoples’ (Gen 17:5b) and to bless in him ‘all the families of the earth’ (Gen 12:3b). The people of Israel, born of Abraham, will be his personal property. God makes himself known to Moses by name. His mysterious name, transcribed Yahweh, means “I am” (Ex 3:14). He frees Israel from slavery in Egypt, seals a covenant at Sinai and, through Moses, gives his people the Law. Repeatedly, God sends prophets to call his people to conversion and renewal of the covenant. The prophets announce that God will establish a new and eternal covenant which will bring radical renewal and final redemption. This covenant will be open to all people. Finally, in Jesus Christ, God shows us the fullness of his merciful love. Through Jesus Christ the invisible God becomes visible. He becomes man like us. This shows us the extent of God’s love.
After the revelation in the Old Testament comes the most obvious sign of God's love: Jesus Christ, his beloved Son. He is the sign par excellence, the greatest manifestation of God’s commitment to man. This is what Jesus wanted to reveal to his friends, especially his closest friends on Mount Tabor. Jesus is the sign; Jesus is the LOVE. The best way the Father found to love us was to give us his beloved Son to love us as the Father loves us.
At that time, Jesus took Peter, James and John, went up with them alone to a high mountain and was transfigured before them. Their clothes became dazzling white such as no fullness in the world could have left them. Elijah and Moses appeared to them, conversing with Jesus. Then Peter raised his voice and said to Jesus: “Master, it is good for us to be here. We will make three tents, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah”. They were frightened and he did not know what he was saying. A cloud formed and covered them, and out of the cloud came a voice: “This is my beloved Son, listen to him!” (Mk 9:2-8)
It is our task to discover in Jesus the Son, the love of the Father through faith. The Father has sought to manifest his love in a perceptible way for us and has found no better way than Jesus, his Son.
Let us ask ourselves:
Is Jesus a sign of LOVE for me?
Do I feel loved in Jesus?
Do I feel the love of Jesus in my life?
It is true that Jesus does not love us bodily, like a father, a mother, a friend... his presence is not as tangible as that of an ordinary human being. But it does not mean that his love does not exist, is not true and is not deep. He loves us every day in his Word, in the Eucharist, in Reconciliation, in the people he gives us, in the depths of our hearts when we understand what we were created for.
Faced with this love that God has for us, we must be amazed, contemplated... let God love us so that it becomes a source of service and love for others. When we powerfully experience the Father’s love in our lives, it impels us to reciprocate His love with love for others. In the words of St. Paul, “the love of Christ urges us.” The first commandment to love God finds its fulfilment in the commandment to love our neighbours. Through our faith, we love God in others. That is why our faith is a response to love and at the same time it is God’s love in the service of others.
1.3. Faith is the response to God’s love
Whoever wants to believe needs “an attentive heart” (1 Kings 3:9). God tries in many ways to make contact with us. In every human encounter, in every moving experience in nature, in every apparent case, in every challenge, in every pain, a message from God for us is hidden. He speaks to us even more clearly when he addresses us with his word or with the voice of our conscience. He speaks to us as a friend. Therefore, we must also respond to him as friends and believe in him, believe in him completely, learn to understand him better and better and accept his will without reservation.
Faith is knowledge and trust; faith is a pure gift from God, which we receive if we ask for it ardently; it is the supernatural power needed to achieve salvation; it requires the free will and clear understanding of man when we accept the divine invitation; it is absolutely certain because it has the guarantee of Jesus; it is incomplete until it is effective in love; it increases if we listen more attentively to God's voice and through prayer experience a living encounter with Him. Faith already allows us to taste the joy of heaven in advance.
This faith enables us to love and it increases the love more and more. Only when we believe can we love without expecting anything in return. Only when faith sustains our love can we heartily forgive those who have offended us.
For personal prayer and meditation
1. Meditate on these sentences and pray:
The measure of love is love without measure (St Francis de Sales).
Love is joy in the face of good; good is the only foundation of love. To love means: to want to do good to someone (St Thomas Aquinas).
2. What do you want to do in order to welcome God’s love and perceive it in your daily life?
3. How can you cherish God’s love during this year? How to love Him and feel loved by Him?
Monthly commitment
Pray and insistently ask the Lord every day...
“Lord, help me to experience your love – the love of an endearing Father towards his child.”
