The Love of God for Us
“God’s love for us is said to be excessive and foolish. St. Paul defines God’s love for us as an ‘excess’ since it infinitely exceeds and surpasses what reason can comprehend and the heart can desire. Relative to us, it is excessive but not in itself. St. Paul also calls it, and without exaggeration, ‘foolishness’ because this love has in some way overturned the natural relationship of God toward the creature. In Christ He died in place of the creature who had become His enemy. Such a thing is inconceivable foolishness for natural reason. Aptly then is it defined as ‘the foolishness of the Cross’ and such ‘foolishness’ is reparation for that other foolishness which is sin. We should meditate upon this excess of love. True love whereby another being is loved, not only for one’s own self-interest but for the other being itself, is not only a passive love but is also active. It is not a simple emotional satisfaction that is born at the sight of a pleasing object, but rather an effective and operating love whereby the good of the loved person is willed.
Hence, the mother bends over her baby, forgetting about herself and all her preoccupations, to dedicate herself entirely to this little being who lives solely because of her. Then she takes him, embraces him, presses him to herself as if she wished to form one single being with him. She dedicates herself to him, day and night, and she gives him food of body and soul that he may grow and become gradually opened to the life of reason and grace.
This type of true love enables us to catch a glimpse of what has been God’s excess of love for us. The charity of God for us is a love essentially active and effective. How could it be simple emotional satisfaction since all that God finds pleasing in us comes from Him and cannot be given to us except through gratuitous love? The love of God, far from supposing lovableness in those it loves, creates it in them through pure benevolence.
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Yet, man did not know how to worthily appraise the infinite value of this divine life. In his blindness he undervalued it, even to the point of sinfully preferring an infinitely inferior life. Therefore, through his own fault he fell headlong from the supernatural heights to which divine mercy had elevated him.
But see how God’s love comes to look for man even in his ruin and misery. It is here that this foolishness, which overturns in a certain sense the natural existing relationship between the Creator and His creature, begins.
We were fallen, but God wished to stoop down over us, to descend to our level, just as a mother stoops down toward her baby. He was divested of His glory, of His infinite majesty. He did not wish to appear in the natural splendor of His magnificence as upon Sinai. He wished, as it were, to make Himself nothing. As St. Paul says, ‘He emptied Himself’ to bring Himself down to our level. He took a body and a soul like ours, divesting Himself of all glory and choosing the most humble condition among men. He wished to be born the son of a laborer and to place Himself in the number of the poorest so that all might be able to come to Him without fear.
In abasing Himself and uniting Himself to us by assuming our nature, God wished to share in our life itself. Consequently, He fulfilled our duties, suffered our pains, experienced our weariness, perspired with our sweat, shed our tears, embraced us and desired our happiness more than we can ourselves. Even more, the Word of God wished to wash our feet.
Finally, He desired to accomplish the total gift of self by dying on the Cross for us. After having undergone the worst humiliations, He shed His blood in the midst of atrocious sufferings....
Yes, St. Paul can speak of an ‘excess of love’ because the natural relationships between the Creator and the creature are exceeded. He can speak of ‘foolishness’ since the natural relationships of the Creator toward His creature are, in a certain sense, reversed. God, offended, dies for the culpable creature who despises and flees from Him!...”
~Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange
But see how God’s love comes to look for man even in his ruin and misery. It is here that this foolishness, which overturns in a certain sense the natural existing relationship between the Creator and His creature, begins.
We were fallen, but God wished to stoop down over us, to descend to our level, just as a mother stoops down toward her baby. He was divested of His glory, of His infinite majesty. He did not wish to appear in the natural splendor of His magnificence as upon Sinai. He wished, as it were, to make Himself nothing. As St. Paul says, ‘He emptied Himself’ to bring Himself down to our level. He took a body and a soul like ours, divesting Himself of all glory and choosing the most humble condition among men. He wished to be born the son of a laborer and to place Himself in the number of the poorest so that all might be able to come to Him without fear.
In abasing Himself and uniting Himself to us by assuming our nature, God wished to share in our life itself. Consequently, He fulfilled our duties, suffered our pains, experienced our weariness, perspired with our sweat, shed our tears, embraced us and desired our happiness more than we can ourselves. Even more, the Word of God wished to wash our feet.
Finally, He desired to accomplish the total gift of self by dying on the Cross for us. After having undergone the worst humiliations, He shed His blood in the midst of atrocious sufferings....
Yes, St. Paul can speak of an ‘excess of love’ because the natural relationships between the Creator and the creature are exceeded. He can speak of ‘foolishness’ since the natural relationships of the Creator toward His creature are, in a certain sense, reversed. God, offended, dies for the culpable creature who despises and flees from Him!...”
~Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange
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