Sunday, May 28, 2023

God Cannot Cease to Love You

 

Do we really believe that since God is love, He cannot cease to love us? 


The following paragraphs are taken from Meditations for Layfolk, a book by Father Bede Jarrett, that first appeared in 1915. Devotion to the Holy Ghost was a notable feature of Father Bede Jarrett’s spirituality. 



The Holy Ghost (Love)

God’s Love Personified


The Third Person of the Blessed Trinity is the most mysterious. About Him, we seem to hear the least and to understand the most vaguely. The work of Father and Son, their place in the economy of the divine plan, is simple and evident, at least in its main lines. However, of the Holy Spirit, it appears as though His precise purpose has not been sufficiently described to us. He is the equal of the Father and the Son, of the same nature, power, substance, and eternally existent with them, participating in the same divine life, and forming with them the ever-blessed Three-in-One. He represents to our human point of view that wonderful mystery, the personified love that proceeds from Father and from Son forever, and by this act completes the perfections of God.

 

We can conceive of no further addition to that being, save power, knowledge, and love. Yet we know also that He has His place, not only in the interrelation (if the word may be allowed) of the Godhead, but in the relationship (though this phrase is certainly inaccurate) that exists between God and us. Since God is one and indivisible, His love for us cannot be other than the love that He has for Himself. In Him, there can be no distinction at all. Therefore, we discover that He loves Himself and us in the love of the Holy Ghost.

 

We see His love to be nothing else than Himselfunchanging, undying, without shadow of alteration. Sin as we may, we cannot make God love us less. Though we be children of wrath, He cannot help but love us, for the gifts of God, especially the supreme gift of Himself, are without repentance.


God’s Love Eternal


God cannot cease to love me. That is the most startling fact that our doctrine reveals. Sinner or saint, He loves and cannot help Himself. Magdalen in her sin, Magdalen in her sainthood, was loved by God. The difference in her position made some difference also in the effect of that love on her, but the love was the same, since it was the Holy Spirit who is the Love of the Father and the Son. Whatever I do, I am loved. Then, if I sin, I am unworthy of love? Yes, but I am unworthy always. He cannot love me for what I am, since in that case I should compel His love and force His will by something external to Himself. 

 

In fact, really, if I consider, I should find that I was not loved by God because I was good, but that I was good because God loved me. My improvement does not cause God to love me, but is the effect of God loving  me. Consequently, even when I am punished by God, He cannot hate me. It is His very love itself that drives Him (out of the very nature of its perfection) to punish. So, Dante spoke truly when he imagined over the portals of Hell the inscription: To rear me was the work of Immortal Power and Love.”

 

Each of us is, therefore, sure that he is loved eternally and that God’s love can suffer no change from God’s side. How, then, is it that we grow evil, or lose the familiar intercourse that we once had with Him? It is because He has given us the terrible power of erecting, as it were, a shield between ourselves and His love. He loves forever the same, but it is we who, by our sins, have the power to shut off that love from effecting anything good in our souls.



God’s Unchanging Love


As I was deep in His love when I was a child, so also does He love me now.


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