TODAY’S WORD…

God is love.

– 1 John 4:8

REFLECTION…

“Faith tells us that God has given His Son for our sakes and gives us the victorious certainty that it is really true: God is love! It thus transforms our impatience and our doubts into the sure hope that God holds the world in His hands and that, as the dramatic imagery of the end of the Book of Revelation points out, in spite of all darkness He ultimately triumphs in glory.

Faith, which sees the love of God revealed in the pierced heart of Jesus on the Cross, gives rise to love. Love is the light – and in the end, the only light – that can always illuminate a world grown dim, and give us the courage needed to keep living and working. Love is possible, and we are able to practise it because we are created in the image of God.

To experience love and in this way to cause the light of God to enter into the world – this is the invitation I would like to extend…”

[Today’s reflection is the concluding paragraph of Pope Benedict XVI’s Encyclical Letter “Deus Caritas Est”]

QUOTES…

“Even if nothing more were to be said in all the pages of Sacred Scripture,

and all we heard from the mouth of the Holy Spirit were that ‘God is love’,

there would be nothing else we would need to look for.”   – St. Augustine

By contemplating the pierced side of Christ,  we can understand (that)…“God is love”.   It is there that this truth can be contemplated.  It is from there that our definition of love must begin.  In this contemplation the Christian discovers the path along which his life and love must move. .”   – Pope Benedict XVI

“At the Cross I learn what creation could never tell me – who God is and what He is to me, a guilty sinner.  God is love; therefore, He is both light and life.  A Saviour-God!  What marvellous grace and glory.”   – William Hallman

PRAYER…

Lord God, You are love!

Father, it is when I look at Your Beloved Son on the Cross,

that I truly come to realise the extent of Your love for me,

even though I do not deserve it.

Abba, thank You for Your love

– I so much want to love You back.