The Love of God 

   “Man is created in the image of God, and God himself is love.  For this reason, the vocation to love is what makes man the authentic image of God:  He becomes like God in the measure that he becomes someone who loves.” (Pope Benedict XVI, “Benedictus: Day by day with Pope Benedict XVI”) 

   I think we have a very flawed understanding of love.  It is not affection, it is not how much we may like someone, and it certainly is not lust.  The love of God is a love that cares only for the other; a love that is willing to give all to another.

   In a sacramental marriage there are three entities involved: the husband, the wife, and God.  It is the love of God that is being pledged one to the other.  Without keeping God in the marriage we fall victim to societies misguided concept of love, which causes many marriages to fail.

   When I married my wife I was essentially a pagan, I had no religious influence in my life.  Going to Mass with her each week I came to love God and the Catholic Church and converted.  My mother-in-law’s response was the adage, “those who pray together stay together.”  I kind of laughed it off at the time, but over the years I’ve come to believe she was absolutely correct.  If God is at the center, the marriage is much more likely to survive the rough spots that so often end marriages.

   St. Paul said, “If I speak in human and angelic tongues, but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal.  And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give away everything I own, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.” (1 Cor 13: 1 – 3)

   I think the message is very clear.  If we do not love with the love of God, we can never truly be in His image.  If we do not have the love of God in our hearts for Him and all His children, we are nothing. 

   “So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Cor 13: 13)