We need to feel God’s love

We have to make the effort to feel the love of God for us which he pours on us abundantly. That’s simply because unless we feel that love and get moved by it, we cannot manage to love as we ought to love. Let’s always remember that Christ himself loves us first, and commanded us to love one another as he himself has loved us. Christ makes himself the standard and source of our love.

Otherwise, what may happen is that we may just rely on our own self-generated kind of love that can only do so much. For example, our self-generated love would not know how to be patient for long with trials and sufferings, how to love and be merciful with those who give us trouble.

It would be a love ruled by the law of Talion, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. It would be a love marked by self-interest. In other words, it would not be pure and completely gratuitous. There would be strings attached to it. Also, it cannot last long. It would be too dependent on our moods, and other shifting conditionings.

Our attitude toward this tremendous and most mysterious love of God for us should be that of extreme gratitude and fidelity, and to love him as much as we could in return, since love is always repaid with love.

Concerning this point, it’s good to remember that we should always feel very close to God because He is first of all very close to us with his love. Yes, even if we are unworthy and imperfect, God will always love us, and it’s right that we always feel confident and sure of this love. We should never doubt the veracity of this truth of our faith.

At the same time, we should never stop trying to get to know and love him more and more, because even if he is the closest being to us, he is also the farthest, since he is pure mystery to us. This latter reality about God should spur, not curb, our effort to find more ways to know, love and serve him.

Everyday, we should work out this need of filling ourselves with God’s love, since this does not come to us automatically. In the first place, we have to contend with our human and natural limitations that simply cannot cope with the fullness of God’s love.

This is not to mention that we are also burdened by the effects of our sins and weaknesses, the environment of temptations and other conditionings that would make us not only insensitive and resistant but also hostile to God’s love.

That’s why it’s good to cultivate a life of recollection and contemplation even while in the middle of the world, ever meditating and relishing on God’s goodness, wisdom, love and mercy.

That he created us when there was no need for him to do so, that he endowed us with the best of things such that we become his image and likeness, that he always forgives us when we fall and is patient with us in our erratic ways, that he provides us with all our needs-all these and more should always be in our mind and heart.

Even if he allows trials, suffering and calamities to come our way, we should not forget that his love knows what to do with them. As St. Paul would put it, “Love bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things…” (1 Cor 13,7)

For his part, everything is given for us to be able to love as we are commanded. In the first place, Christ is the God made man who shows us the fullness of love which is the very essence of God, just as St. John said, “God is love.” (1 Jn 4,8)

Christ shows us the kind of love that has to contend with our human condition that is wounded and weakened by sin. It is the kind of love that knows how to deal with sin in its many forms and in its consequences.

It’s a love that knows how to forgive, even to the point of assuming our sinfulness, willing to die for us even when we are still in the state of sin and have not yet asked for forgiveness. St. Paul attests to this when he said: “God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us…” (Rom 5,8)

We need to broaden our understanding of love, and to vitally link it with the love of God.