: Fr. Peter John Cameron O.P.
: Made for Love, Loved by God
: Servant
: 9781635823264
: 1
: CHF 10.50
:
: Christentum
: English
: 160
: kein Kopierschutz
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
A down-to-earth, practical reflection on the nature of God' s love, eloquently written by Fr. Peter Cameron. Drawing heavily on Sacred Scripture and the transforming encounters with Jesus Christ recorded in the Gospels, Fr. Cameron seeks to make God's love as real, concrete, and accessible to his readers' lives as possible. He emphasizes how God constantly searches for us and takes the initiative in loving us-how he woos us into happiness with him. Made for Love, Loved by God will also address common misconceptions about God' s love as well as the obstacles that prevent us from letting God love us. After reading this book, the reader will feel closer to God by being shown a way to be closer to God. It will imbue the reader with the certainty of the psalmist: 'The Lord delights in those who wait for his love' (Psalm 147:11).
CHAPTER ONE
HUNGER FOR LOVE
Then the Divine Goodness, regarding with the eye of His mercy the hunger and desire of that soul, said:…
“The soul cannot live without love, but always wants to love something, because she is made of love, and, by love, I created her…. The affection moved the intellect, saying, as it were, ‘I will love, because the food on which I feed is love.’”3
—ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA
“I love you.” Who would ever dare to live life without those words?
Jean Vanier (born 1928) is the founder ofL’Arche, an international federation of group homes both for people with developmental disabilities and for those who assist them. Several years ago I remember being struck by a passage in one of his books. It was about an eight-year-old boy named Armando:
Armando cannot walk or talk and is very small for his age. He came to us from an orphanage where he had been abandoned. He no longer wanted to eat because he no longer wanted to live cast off from his mother. He was desperately thin and was dying of lack of food. After a while in our community where he found people who held him, loved him and wanted him to live, he gradually began to eat again and to develop in a remarkable way. He still cannot walk or talk or eat by himself, his body is twisted and broken, and he has a severe mental disability, but when you pick him up, his eyes and his whole body quiver with joy and excitement and say: “I love you.” He has a deep therapeutic influence on people.4
In some ways we are all like Armando. Despite our loneliness, our powerlessness, our brokenness, something drives us and refuses to die. We are a hunger for love. And when at last that love comes and finds us, picks us up and holds us close, it transforms us. We become love for others.
This is why Jesus commands, “Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). The total receptivity to love modeled by that defenseless young boy is what equips us best for heaven.