On the Love of Christ

On the Love of Christ

All holiness and perfection of soul lies in our love for Jesus Christ our God, who is our Redeemer and our supreme good  It is part of the love of God to aquire and to nurture all the virtues which make a man perfect. 

Has not God in fact won for himself a claim on all our love? From all eternity he has loved us. And it is in this vein that he speaks to us: “O man, consider carefully that I first loved you. You had not yet appeared in the light of day, nor did the world yet exist, but already I loved you. From all eternity I have loved you.”

 

But he did not wish to give us only beautiful creatures; the truth is that to win for himself our love, he went so far as to bestow upon us the fullness of himself. The eternal Father went so far as to give us his only Son.

 

When saw that we were all dead through sin and deprived of his grace, what did he do? Compelled, as the Apostle says, by the superabundance of his love for us, he sent his beloved Son to make preparation for us and to call us back to a sinless life.

 

By giving us his Son, whom he did not spare precisely so that he might spare us, he bestowed on us at once every good: grace, love and heaven; for all these goods are certainly inferior to the Son: He who did not spare his own Son, but handed him over for all of us; how could he fail to give us along with his Son all good things?

 

Source: The Liturgy of the Hours – Office of Readings

From a Sermon by Saint Alphonsus Liguori, bishop

Image taken from Wikimedia Commons