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 Himself—unchanging,
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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