Love for Love
“Modern man seeks mainly for ‘experience’—putting himself at the centre of things he wishes to make them subservient to this aim; too often, even God becomes the source from which the highest experience flows, instead of being Him Whom we adore, worship, and are prepared to serve, whatever the cost to us.
…the experiential knowledge which God in His infinite Love and condescension gives to those who seek Him with their whole heart is always a gift; its essential, abiding quality is its gratuity: it is an act of Divine Love and cannot therefore be deserved.
…‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God’—blessed are those who have understood that they are nothing in themselves, possess nothing which they dare call ‘their own’. If they are ‘something’ it is because they are loved of God and because they know for certain that their worth in God’s eyes can be measured by the humiliation of the Son of God, His life, the Agony of the Garden, the dereliction of the Cross—the Blood of Christ. To be, to be possessed of the gift of life and to be granted all that makes its richness means to be loved by God; and those who know this, free from any delusion that they can exist or possess apart from this mystery of love have entered into the Kingdom of God which is the Kingdom of Love. What then shall be their response to this generous, self-effacing, sacrificial Love? An endeavour to respond to love for love, as there is no other way of acknowledging love.”
~Andrei Bloom
…the experiential knowledge which God in His infinite Love and condescension gives to those who seek Him with their whole heart is always a gift; its essential, abiding quality is its gratuity: it is an act of Divine Love and cannot therefore be deserved.
…‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God’—blessed are those who have understood that they are nothing in themselves, possess nothing which they dare call ‘their own’. If they are ‘something’ it is because they are loved of God and because they know for certain that their worth in God’s eyes can be measured by the humiliation of the Son of God, His life, the Agony of the Garden, the dereliction of the Cross—the Blood of Christ. To be, to be possessed of the gift of life and to be granted all that makes its richness means to be loved by God; and those who know this, free from any delusion that they can exist or possess apart from this mystery of love have entered into the Kingdom of God which is the Kingdom of Love. What then shall be their response to this generous, self-effacing, sacrificial Love? An endeavour to respond to love for love, as there is no other way of acknowledging love.”
~Andrei Bloom
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