AN EASY WAY TO BECOME A SAINT

by
Fr. Paul O'Sullivan, O.P. [E.D.M.] With Eccles. Appr., 1949, Portugal
TAN BOOKS AND PUBLISHERS

Chapter 12
THOUGHTS ON THE LOVE OF GOD

There is nothing that makes us so happy as to love God. To love God is the greatest work of our lives. We are made expressly to love God. Every act of the love of God is of priceless value and will have an eternal reward.

One act of love is worth a thousand acts of any other virtue, just as one little diamond is worth a thousand gold pounds. On the other hand, everything else we do, even if we were to do mighty things, if we were to spend fifty years in some great work, all is worth nothing, nothing, if we do not do it for the love of God.

Does that mean that all the work, all the occupations of every day during all our lives are worth nothing?
By no means. Everything we do, every occupation, every employment, resting, sleeping, eating, enjoying ourselves, all will have merit, if we only do them for love of God, because God wishes it. God made us to work, God commands us to sleep and to eat. Therefore, we can and should do everything for love of God.

Surely there is nothing more easy. That is just what St. Paul tells us: "Whatever you do, in word or work, whether you eat or whether you drink, do all in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ."

That is what good Christians do when they get up in the morning. They kneel down and make their morning offering: "Sacred Heart of Jesus, I offer Thee, through the pure hands of Mary, all the prayers, the works, the sufferings of this day, in union with the Masses being offered up all over the world, for the love of the Sacred Heart and for the Apostleship of Prayer."

This simple prayer makes every act of the day an act of the love of God. All the better if dt:tring the day we sometimes confirm it by saying, "All for Thee, Jesus."

The morning offering takes only one minute, but we must say it deliberately, slowly, meaning what we say.
To love God is very easy, if we only remember how infinitely good He is. He has given us everything we have, He has made us like Himself, to His own image and likeness. He has made us not as servants but as His own children, who will be with Him forever in Heaven, seated on thrones like the Angels, enjoying His own immense happiness.
With immense love He suffered and died to save us. Then He mystically dies for us every day in the Mass and offers up His sufferings and death for us. Every Mass has exactly the same value as the death of Our Lord on Calvary! Can it be possible?

He is in the Blessed Sacrament in every Catholic church in the world. He is there as really and truly as He is in Heaven.

He is waiting for our visits. We can get oceans of grace if we only visit Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. And yet how few visit Him! What more could God do for us, what more could He give us?

He is our best, our dearest, our most loving Father, and He commands us to call Him by this loving name, "Our Father, Who art in Heaven."

All the mothers and fathers of the whole Earth do not love us so tenderly, so really, as our sweet Lord does.
If we only meditate on all this, we must love God. But also, in all our prayers, our first, most important, our principal intention should be to ask God for His love, more love, more love.

There is nothing He gives us more readily, more abundantly, than His blessed love.

We all desire to have a good friend, a friend who really loves us and is always ready to help us.

A man loves his wife and she him, and this is their greatest happiness. A mother loves her children. There is no love on Earth so wonderful as the love of a mother.

But God's love for us is more real, more true and gives us more happiness than all the love of wives and husbands and friends and mothers.

To think that the great God of Heaven loves me with infinite love-----tender, personal love!

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