QUOTATION: God's Love

One of the principal reasons that made the infidels so incredulous towards the mystery of the Incarnate Word is that they could not persuade themselves that God had as much love for the human as Christians claimed. Celsus, in his writing against the Gospels, to which the learned Origen strongly answered, mocks Christians who dared to presume that God himself descended from heaven to come to their aid. They found it undignified for God to have such a special care for human things; and it is for this reason that the Holy Scriptures, in order to establish in hearts the belief in such a great mystery, never ceases to publish the goodness of God and his love for men. It is also what compelled the apostle John to confess in these terms the faith of redemption: “For us, we believe, he said, in the charity that God had for men.” What a beautiful profession of faith, and conceived in such a singular way, but absolutely necessary in order to uproot incredulity.

--Bossuet, Panegyric of St. Peter Nolasco

QUOTATION: God Loves Us Individually

God does not treat us as part of a collectivity. He knows each one by name. He calls each one personally.

--Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: Why Jesus Suffered

Jesus could have saved us without suffering; but he chose rather to embrace a life of sorrow and contempt, deprived of every earthly consolation, and a death of bitterness and desolation, only to make us understand the love which he bore us, and the desire which he had that we should love him.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Incarnation, Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ

QUOTATION: God is Merciful

Since God has given us his Son, whom he loved as himself, how can we fear that he will deny us any other good that we ask of him? If, therefore, he has given us his Son, he will not refuse us pardon for the offences which we have committed against him, provided we detest them; he will not refuse us the grace to resist temptations, if we implore it of him; he will not refuse us his holy love, if we desire it; he will not, finally, refuse us Paradise, if we do not render ourselves unworthy of it by falling into sin. Behold how Jesus himself assures us of this: If you ask the Father anything in My name, He will give it you.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Incarnation, Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ

QUOTATION: Humility

To be taken with love for a soul, God does not look on its greatness, but on the greatness of its humility.

--St. John of the Cross

QUOTATION: Love of God

Few want to love Him, because He loves too much. He wants us to be perfect, and we do not want to be perfect.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul, 1949

QUOTATION: God's Love

With whatever love I am loved, with that love I respond. 

--God to St. Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue 

QUOTATION: God's Love

Everyone needs to be touched by the comfort and attraction of God’s saving love, which is mysteriously at work in each person, above and beyond their faults and failings.

--Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium

QUOTATION: God's Love of Us

The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.

-- C.S. Lewis

QUOTATION: Our Self-Worth

We sometimes value ourselves mistakenly: at first, we think we're the best in the world; later, we switch to despising ourselves, to feeling that we can't succeed at anything.  We swing from one extreme to another.  The Blood of Christ gives us true self-esteem-- we're worth a lot in Jesus' eyes!  Not because we are better or worse than other people, but because we have been and remain very much beloved.

--Pope Francis (Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio), Homily on the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, 2011

QUOTATION: Fault-Finding in Oneself

Do not stunt your spiritual life by looking always for you faults. Think of God’s love. Never despair! Not until God ceases to be infinitely good and you begin to be infinitely wicked have you a right to be hopeless.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: God's Love for Us

Consider God's charity. Where else have we ever seen someone who has been offended voluntarily paying out his life for those who have offended him?

--St. Catherine of Siena

QUOTATION: The Paradox of Divine Love

By a beautiful paradox of Divine love, God makes His Cross the very means of our salvation and our life. We have slain Him; we have nailed Him there and crucified Him; but the Love in His eternal heart could not be extinguished. He willed to give us the very life we slew; to give us the very Food we destroyed; to nourish us with the very Bread we buried, and the very Blood we poured forth. He made our very crime into a happy fault; He turned a Crucifixion into a Redemption; a Consecration into a Communion; a death into Life Everlasting.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, This is the Mass

QUOTATION: Jesus' Love

When you look at the Crucifix, you understand how much Jesus loved you then. When you look at the Sacred Host you understand how much Jesus loves you now.

--Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta

QUOTATION: Christ's Love

It was love that motivated His self-emptying, that led Him to become a little lower than angels, to be subject to parents, to bow His head beneath the Baptist's hands, to endure the weakness of the flesh, and to submit to death even upon the cross,

--St. Bernard of Clairvaux

QUOTATION: God's Love

God loves us more than a father, mother, friend, or any else could love, and even more than we are able to love ourselves

--St. John Chrysostom

QUOTATION: Trust in God

Fancy a mother who playfully holds in her arms a child over the edge of a high wall, or over the brink of a precipice. Who could believe that this mother would let her child fall? Neither can I persuade myself that God will let me fall into the depths of hell if I rely on Him; therefore I repose with perfect security on the bosom of Divine Goodness much more peacefully than does a child in the arms of its mother.

--St. Paul of the Cross

QUOTATION: God's Love for Us

Jesus loves us as a Brother and a Friend; consequently, all distinctions and distance disappear. With Him we share the same condition, the same name, the same table, the same life. And if He willed to be born an infant and to pass through all the ages of life, it was that in every state, at all periods of their life, all men may have in Him a Brother and behold God's love humanized and like unto their own. It was not enough for Him to become like unto us in nature. He would share our trials, our miseries, our sufferings, that we might be overcome by that evidence and forced to cry out "Yes, God has loved us! " And He has done so. He has taken all my sins on Himself, borne them alone, and accepted their terrible chastisement, interior trials, pains of soul, horrible sufferings of body, His interior and exterior Passion! Behold the proofs of His love. Is this enough? Shall we deny a love that is proved by suffering's and death? Ah! who would do what He has done? No one no one! Shall we be unjust toward God alone, and shall we not acknowledge that He loves us?

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Man's Ingratitude to God

And man does not love God! He offends Him! Ah! God brings contempt on Himself by dint of loving. One might say that He sought It! Would you allow yourselves to be thus despised and insulted by your children, your subordinates? God showers man with riches, loads him with benefits in spite of his sins, his daily sins! It is that he may return to Him, be conquered by Him. We must have the hearts of demons not to love God!

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Justice and Mercy

God has two feet, one of justice and the other of mercy. We must embrace both, lest justice separated from mercy should cause us to despair, or mercy without justice should excite in us presumption.

--St. Bernard of Clairvaux