God’s Love for Us & the Response Owed
“Indeed at the moment He left us and deprived us of His sensible presence He declared His wish of remaining with us even to the end of time and of giving Himself to us in a more intimate and complete way. It was not sufficient for Him to have abased Himself to the level of the Incarnation; He wished to abase Himself even to the level of the Eucharist, to empty Himself to the point of disappearing under the appearances of bread and wine. Although He foresaw in the smallest details all the profanations that would take place, He chose to remain just as docile in the hands of a sacrilegious priest as in the hands of a saintly priest. It was not sufficient for Him to unite Himself to us to become our life; He wished also to unite Himself to us, to each of us, body and soul, in Communion. It was not sufficient to shed His blood for us; He wished to give us His body for food, He wished to be eaten by us that He might transform and assimilate us still more to Himself. Such is the excess of God’s love for us, but this love demands a response.”
-Knowing the Love of God, Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange
Holiness is that response.
Holiness is the perfection of love.
