This Marvelous Exchange

     “We might say the whole mystery of our redemption in Christ, by His incarnation, His death and his resurrection, consists of this marvelous exchange: in the heart of Christ, God has loved us humanly, so as to render our human hearts capable of loving divinely. God became man so that man might become God – might love as only God is capable of loving, with the purity, intensity, power, tenderness, and inexhaustible patience that belong to divine love. It is an extraordinary source of hope and great consolation to know that, by virtue of God’s grace working in us (if we remain open to it by persevering in faith, prayer, and the sacraments), the Holy Spirit will transform and expand our hearts to the point of one day making them capable of loving as God does.”                                          Fr. Jacques Phillipe



     Loving divinely, as God does, is impossible for us to do by our own power. Our love is often shallow, self-centered, calculated, measured and faulty. We want to give love when we “feel” like it, and hold it back when we judge the effort is not worth the gain we will receive in return. We want to love those we enjoy and “click” with, and shutter when we are with persons with whom loving can be difficult. Even when we are at our best, we can only maintain loving for a short amount of time, without imploring this grace from God.

His Victim of Love

     “In order to love Jesus, to be His victim of love, the more weak and miserable we are, the more fitting are we for the operations of this consuming and transforming Love”                                               St. Therese of Lisieux


     We often fail in our efforts to love God as He so deserves and lament in our poor attempts to do so. We want so very much to do all for love of God and feel frustrated when we fail.