QUOTATION: Desire for Death

It is a sign that we love God but little, if we have no desire soon to go to see Him, feeling certain that we shall never be able to love Him more. For the meantime, let us love God as much as we can in this life. For this alone should we live to increase in our love to Him ; the measure of love to God in which death will find us, will be the measure of our love to God in a blessed eternity.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, Preparation for Death

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: The Difference Between Knowing About God and Loving Him

There is a world of difference between knowing about God through study and knowing God through love—as great as a difference between a courtship carried by mail and one by personal contact. Many skeptical professors know the proofs of the existence of God better than some who say their prayers; but because the professors never acted on the knowledge which they had, because they never loved the God whom they knew by study, no new knowledge of God was given to them. They liked to talk about religion but did nothing about it, and their knowledge remained sterile as a result.

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

QUOTATION: Love of God

But he who would love God exceedingly in heaven must first love him very much on earth. According to the degree of love which we bear towards God when we finish the journey of life, will be the degree of love with which we shall continue to love God for all eternity.

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

QUOTATION: Knowledge of God

A virtuous man may be ignorant, but ignorance is not a virtue. It would be a strange God who could be loved better by being known less. Love of God is immeasurably more important than knowledge of God; but if a man loves God knowing a little about Him, he should love God more from knowing more about Him: for every new thing known about God is a new reason for loving Him.

--Frank Sheed, Theology and Sanity, 1947

QUOTATION: You Must Choose

Man is faced by two laws : the love of God and the love of self. These two loves are forever at war. One of the two must be obeyed. A choice must be made of one or the other. Neutrality is impossible.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: The Best Motive for Contrition

God pardons only the contrite and humble heart, and that the most powerful motive for contrition is that of divine love, regret for having offended Him who has loved us so much. It ought to make the smallest offence the greatest evil in our eyes, since it wounds a God infinitely good and amiable.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Love of God

Love for our Father does not walk a path carpeted in flowers.

--St. Therese of Lisieux

QUOTATION: Love of God is Salvation

He who does not acquire the love of God will scarcely persevere in the grace of God, for it is very difficult to renounce sin merely through fear of chastisement.

-- St. Alphonsus Liguori

QUOTATION: Loving God

At the beginning one loves God for only his gifts or for the emotions He sends us. He treats us then, ‘like a young woman who is being courted.’ If gifts are no longer given in abundance after true marriage has occurred it is not because the husband’s love is less, but because it is greater. For now he gives himself. It is not the husband’s gifts that his wife loves nor his compliments, nor even the thrill of pleasure she gets from his company. She loves him. The moment the Lover is loved for Himself, then the nature of the gifts ceases to matter. If God withdraws all sensible gifts it is only because He wants the union between the soul and Himself to be more personal and less dependent on His generosity. 

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, That Tremendous Love

QUOTATION: Transmitting the Faith

If your heart overflows with faith and love for God, you will find a thousand ways to pass on these feelings to your child.

--St. Irenaeus

QUOTATION: The Love of God

The love of God is not taught. No one has taught us to enjoy the light or to be attached to life more than anything else. And no one has taught us to love the two people who brought us into the world and educated us. Which is all the more reason to believe that we did not learn to love God as a result of outside instruction. In the very nature of every human being has been sown the seed of the ability to love. You and I ought to welcome this seed, cultivate it carefully, nourish it attentively and foster its growth by going to the school of God’s commandments with the help of His grace.

--St Basil the Great

QUOTATION: We Think as We Love

We think as we love. If you love Our Lord, you will think of Him spontaneously and without effort. You will find Him everywhere and in every thing. You will see only Him, and this knowledge is better than all books, it takes the place of them all. But for this one must have Him very really in his heart. The habitual thought follows the affection, and quite naturally attaches itself to it.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Accepting God's Will

Those who love God do not protest, whatever He may ask of them, nor doubt His kindness when He sends them difficult hours. A sick person takes medicine without asking the physician to justify its bitter taste because the patient trusts the doctor’s knowledge; so the soul that has sufficient faith accepts all the events of life as gifts of God in the serene assurance that God knows best.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: To Avoid Relapse

A soul that always walks by the single way of the fear of punishment, and from this single motive avoids sin, is always in great danger of making a relapse before long into sin; but he that attaches himself to God by love is sure not to lose him as long as he loves him.

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

QUOTATION: Love Always Wants to Do More

Love cannot remain idle, and never says, "It is enough." The soul that loves God, the more she does for her beloved, the more she desires to do, in order to please him, and to attract to herself his affections the more.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Holy Eucharist

QUOTATION: All or Nothing

God does not love conditions. They hide reserves, they prevent the sincerity of the gift. He wants all or nothing

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Perfect Faith

His faith is most perfect whose love of God is most perfect.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Holy Eucharist

QUOTATION: The Self is Not the Source of Love

A man cannot find in self a love greater than self. It would be contrary to reason that an effect should be greater than its cause. Seek, then, a love that comes from on high, from Jesus Christ, for it alone can arm us to struggle against self.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Getting to Know God

If you want to know about God, there is only one way to do it: get down on your knees. You can make His acquaintance by investigation, but you can win His love only by loving. Most people who deny God do not do so because their reason tells them there is no God, for how could reason witness against Reason? Their denial is rather because of wishful thinking. They feel they would be happier if there were no God, for then they could do as they pleased. Think a little less about whether you deserve to be loved by Him; He loves you even though you are not deserving. It is His love alone that will make you deserving. Most of us are unhappy because we never give God a chance to love us; we are in love only with ourselves.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, A Preface to Religion