To love as God loves us...

If God’s love has sunk deep roots in a person, he is able to love even those who do not merit this love, just as God loves us. Fathers and mothers do not love their children only when they merit it: they love them always, even if, of course, they make them understand when they have made mistakes. From God we learn to will always and only the good and never evil. We learn to look upon others not only with our own eyes but with the gaze of God, which is the gaze of Jesus Christ. It is a look that comes from the heart and does not stop at the surface; it goes beyond appearances and succeeds in grasping the expectations of the other: of being listened to, of being gratuitously attended to; in a word, of being loved. But there is also the inverse path: opening myself to the other as he is, reaching out to him, making myself available, I open myself also to knowing God, to knowing that he exists and that he is good. Love of God and love of neighbor are inseparable and reciprocally related. Jesus did not invent either of them, but he revealed that they are, at bottom, a single commandment, and he did this not only with words, but above all with his witness: the very Person of Jesus and his whole mystery incarnate the unity of the love of God and neighbor, like the two lines of the cross, the vertical and the horizontal. In the Eucharist he grants us a twofold love, giving us himself, so that, nourished by this Bread, we love each other as he loved us.  ~Pope Benedict XVI, 11/4/12 Angelus

Dearly beloved,

let us love one another;

for love is of God,

and he who loves

is born of God

and knows God.

~1 John 4:7