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Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost. The Love of God.
The Gospel according to St. Matthew, xxii. 35-46.
“At that time the Pharisees came to Jesus: and one of them, a doctor of the law, asked Him, tempting Him : Master, which is the great commandment in the law ? Jesus said to him : Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like to this : Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets. And the Pharisees being gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying : What think you of Christ ? Whose son is He ? They say to Him : David's. He saith to them : How, then, doth David in spirit call Him Lord, saying : The Lord said to my Lord : Sit on My right hand, until I make Thy enemies Thy foo stool ? If David, then, call Him Lord, how is He his son ? And no man was able to answer Him a word : neither durst any man from that day forth ask Him any more questions.”
Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation.
We will meditate tomorrow upon the commandment of the love of God, recalled to us by the gospel, and we shall see : 1st, the reasons for loving God ; 2nd, the manner of maintaining and increasing love towards God. We shall thence deduce the resolution : 1st, to perform all our actions, little ones as well as great, through love to God, and from a great desire to please Him ; 2nd, often to utter, by day and by night, ejaculatory prayers or loving aspirations. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of St. Ignatius : "Lord, give me Thy love, and it suffices me!"
Meditation for the Morning.
Let us adore Our Lord Jesus Christ giving His enemies, when they came to tempt Him, the commandment of the love of God, which He calls the first and the greatest of all the commandments. Let us thank Him for this lesson, and beg Him to make it sink deeply into our heart.
Reasons for Loving God.
Why should we love God ? Because, first, He is God ; that is to say, the supreme Being, the necessary and eternal Being, the Being who is infinitely perfect, infinite goodness and beauty, wisdom and holiness in their essence ; our Father, our all, to whom belongs so essentially all the love of which our heart is capable, that God Himself could not dispense us from loving Him. Wherefore should we love God? It is because love is the means of becoming perfect. When we really love God we have no other will than His ; we only love what He loves, and only hate what He hates ; we do all that He commands, nothing that He forbids; and thus we accomplish the whole law. Wherefore love God ? It is because we find all good things in this one sole good. We find therein the most perfect satisfaction of our soul and our mind, and there remains nothing to desire. "Give me Thy love, my God" said St. Ignatius, "and that suffices me." We may do without all other knowledge; we cannot do without the knowledge of divine love. Possessed of the knowledge of all the sciences, we may yet be unhappy ; with the love of God we are always happy ; and the most ignorant of men, who knows how to love God, is worth more than the wise one who does not love Him. Wherefore love God ? Because not to love Him is a triple crime : a sin of criminal want of appreciation, because God and His perfections merit all the love of our hearts infinitely more than all creatures put together ; a crime of injustice, because man, not being able to live without love, and, therefore, loving creatures more than he loves the Creator, thereby prefers what is finite to what is infinite, nothingness to everything, some few drops of beauty and goodness to be found in creatures to the ocean of all goodness and of all beauty which is in God, which is supremely unjust ; lastly, a crime of ingratitude, since we have received all from God, and nothing from creatures except the few good things which God has enabled them to bestow upon us ; since, also, we expect from God eternal happiness, and nothing from creatures except as regards this present life. God does us nothing but what is good ; creatures often do us nothing but evil. O God, how just it is to love Thee with all the love of our hearts !
How to Preserve and Increase in our Hearts Love for God.
1st. We must avoid, as much as possible, even slight faults. Faults, however slight they may be, cool the heart of God and our own heart, weaken love, diminish grace. 2nd. We must watch over our heart continually in order to hinder it from attaching itself to creatures. The love of God and the love of creatures are incompatible things ; it is for us to choose between these two loves. Now could we be blind enough to permit love toward creatures to take the upper hand over love to the Creator? The love of God so fills the heart as to leave nothing lacking, no other desire than that of always loving Him more and more ; whilst, on the contrary, the love of creatures leaves the heart constantly empty and thirsting for something further. The love of God is full of sweetness, whilst the love of creatures is always mingled with bitterness. The thought, I love God and am loved by Him, consoles us in all the troubles of life ; the love of creatures gives but little consolation, and is often the origin of the greatest troubles. 3rd. We must give up our heart to love, with a great and continual desire to be entirely filled and enkindled with it, and to make as many acts of it as possible. This is what St. Francis de Sales advises. “How,” he was asked one day, “can we increase in divine love ?” “By loving,” he replied. In the same way as we learn to read by reading, to write by writing, so also we learn to love God by loving Him ; that is to say, by multiplying aspirations of love night and day. Each act of love is like wood put on the fire ; it heats, kindles, and augments the flames of holy love. 4th. We must often take an account of the state of our soul, examine to what degree holy love is dominant in us, whether it is really the motive of our acts and sentiments ; and after this examination conceive a great desire to love God more, ask of Him grace to do so, and make the resolution that we will. Yes, my God, I desire to annihilate in me whatever is human and according to nature ; I desire that Thy love alone should direct and lead me, without taking into consideration any natural repugnances ; I desire amidst all that changes around me to remain in variably fixed in Thy holy love, and in dependence upon its holy inspirations.
Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.
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