Love God above all things

"You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength."

"You shall love your neighbor as yourself"

Recall the Last Supper, He is surrounded by his disciples. He tells them a new commandment, "Love one another as I have loved you." So now, He says that our love for one another has to mirror Jesus' love for us. And, how did He love us? You can scarcely count the ways. For the love of us He became human, born of a teenage Jewish girl and grew up in a small village where everyone knew His every secret, except the big secret that He was not Joseph's son, but God's. For the love of us He walked the long dusty roads of Palestine, healing the sick and raising the dead, comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. He was hungry and thirsty with no place to lay His head.

Each word, each gesture was shaped of love and all of this crowned by the last great act of love, crucifixion. No greater love than this to lay down your life for your friend or for an enemy. Even crucifixion was not enough. He never stops giving, giving His very self. How many times have you heard these words, "This is my body given for you."? What does this all mean to you? With all that crowds in upon us, how is it possible today to love God above all things? The only way I know how to do that is not to just know about God but to come to know God, to have in some way experienced Him, to have Him touch you and you touch Him. Get to know God. You cannot love someone you do not know.

source: this week's reflection, Fr.Bob Warren, SA

Love God with all your Heart

"If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, 

and my Father will love him, and we will come to him 

and make our home with him."

John 14:23

Our faith calls us to reflect on and renew our commitments to God. This process of continuous conversion affirms the strength of our faith, as it also challenges us to keep growing in faith.

We are well aware that our daily lives are often filled with many blessings. Our spiritual lives are also filled with blessings—including the promise God makes to us for eternal life with Him, the promise we make to God to live as He asks us, and the promise of hope we receive through our devotion to St. Jude. Every promise requires work to stay true to it, even as our lives require flexibility and openness. In our spiritual life, that work is in part about humbling ourselves to keep Christ’s way embedded in how we approach our challenges as well as our gifts.

One of God’s gifts is our free will, which gives us both profound freedom and profound responsibility. We have choices to make every day about when and how our faith is going to guide our decisions. Our hope is that we will remain strong in our faith, so that our commitments to God are never far from our thoughts and actions.

The more we draw on our faith in God as we make decisions that take into account what He asks of us—the more we feel, and in turn know—the reality of His presence. When we know God is a part of us, we are better able to understand His grace and what that means for our lives day-to-day, as well as on a spiritual level.

source: www.shrineofstjude.org/

Fear God and Love God ~ Revere His Priest and forsake not His Ministers