Friday, July 29, 2011

Love Without Limits 9 (Fr Lev Gillet)


"With what love, then, are you loved?" God asks. "I did not say, 'You were loved.' Nor did I say 'You will be loved.' I did not just love you yesterday or the day before. Nor is it simply tomorrow or the day after tomorrow that I will love you. You are loved today, at this very moment.

"So it is with every one of my human creatures. You express surprise, my child, and you question me, asking: 'Really? Am I loved without exception?' Yes, without exception. Yet you reply: 'Lord, how can that possibly be? Can someone who sins against you be loved by you at the very same time?' Yes, my child. If I did not continue to love a sinful person, would I let that person go on living? My Love is seated like a beggar before the door of someone who does not love. It waits. It will continue to wait. The length of time that I shall wait is beyond human comprehension. I wait. And who will be able to separate me from my beloved sinner?

"You see, then, my child, with what great a Love you are loved! I do not say you are 'deeply' loved or 'greatly' loved,' or loved more or less than someone else. You have heard it said that I love some and despise others, that I love to very different degrees. This is because I have had to speak to human beings in human ways and in human language, in a pedagogical style, with poor human words that cannot possibly express divine realities. Nevertheless, in my indivisible Love there is neither 'more' nor 'less.' My Love is pure quality, containing nothing quantitative, nothing measurable. In its infinite fullness it is offered to all people equally. I can only love in a divine way. That is, entirely, giving myself totally in and through it. It is my human creatures who open themselves more or less - or else close themselves entirely - to my Love.

"Let me use an image. Divine Love is like atmospheric pressure that surrounds and weighs upon every creature. It besieges everyone, desires to conquer everyone. It seeks to force an opening, to find a pathway leading to the heart, in order to fill the person entirely. The difference between the sinner and the saint is that the sinner closes his heart to Love, whereas the saint opens it to that Love. Yet it is the very same Love, offered to both, that attempts to fulfill both. The one rejects it, the other accepts it. There is no acceptance, though, without grace, and that grace is immeasurable."


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