Who Can Express the
Binding Power of Divine Love?
Let
the man truly possessed by the love of Christ keep his commandments. Who can
express the binding power of divine love? Who can find words for the splendour
of its beauty? Beyond all description are the heights to which it lifts us.
Love
unites us to God; it cancels innumerable sins, has no limits to its endurance,
bears everything patiently. Love is neither servile nor arrogant. It does not
provoke schisms or form cliques, but always acts in harmony with others. By it
all God’s chosen ones have been sanctified; without it, it is impossible to
please him. Out of love the Lord took us to himself; because he loved us and it
was God’s will, our Lord Jesus Christ gave his life’s blood for us – he
gave his body for our body, his soul for our soul.
See
then, beloved, what a great and wonderful thing love is, and how inexpressible
its perfection. Who are worthy to possess it unless God makes them so? To him
therefore we must turn, begging of his mercy that there may be found in us a
love free from human partiality and beyond reproach. Every generation from
Adam’s time to ours has passed away; but those who by God’s grace were made
perfect in love have a dwelling now among the saints, and when at last the
kingdom of Christ appears, they will be revealed. Take shelter in your rooms
for a little while, says Scripture, until my wrath subsides. Then I will
remember the good days, and will raise you from your graves.
Happy
are we, beloved, if love enables us to live in harmony and in the observance of
God’s commandments, for then it will also gain for us the remission of our
sins. Scripture pronounces happy those whose transgressions are pardoned, whose
sins are forgiven. Happy the man, it says, to whom the Lord imputes no fault,
on whose lips there is no guile. This is the blessing given those whom God has
chosen through Jesus Christ our Lord. To him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Source:
The Liturgy of the Hours – Office of Readings
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