Today is Jan. 9, Thursday after Epiphany.
We read in Scripture at Mass today, “Beloved, we love God because he first loved us” (1 Jn 4:19).
“The saints are not content to love God emotionally, to admire His goodness intellectually, or to think with poetic enthusiasm of His divine perfections.” These words of the Dominican theologian Father Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange point to the profound truth of love: It is more than sentiment, more than admiration, more than an ideal. True love for God is a response — a total gift of self to the One who first loved us.
When we hear St. John’s words, “We love God because he first loved us,” we are reminded that all love begins with God. From the moment of our creation, his love has been poured into us, not because of anything we have done to earn it, but because he is love itself. In the Incarnation, this love became tangible in Jesus Christ, who gave himself completely for our sake, even to the point of death on a cross.
The saints understood this truth deeply. They saw their love for God not as something they initiated but as a return — a response to the overwhelming love they had first received from him. Yet they did not stop at superficial gestures of love. They aspired to love God with the entirety of their being, offering their lives as a complete response to his infinite love.
‘Love as the saints loved’
This is the challenge Father Garrigou-Lagrange poses to us: to love as the saints loved. Their love was not fleeting or shallow; it was rooted in a profound desire to give back to God what he had given to them. They loved with their decisions, choosing to align their lives with God’s will even when it was difficult. They loved with their actions, pouring themselves out in service to others. They loved with their whole hearts, allowing God to transform them into vessels of his grace.
In the Christmas season, we are reminded of how God loved us first, long before we could even dream of loving him in return. This love calls us to imitate him. God made the first move in love, and we are called to make a return of that love, even when it is difficult or inconvenient. The Christ Child in the manger teaches us that love often begins in the hidden and the small: a kind word, a gesture of mercy, an act of forgiveness. May these waning days of the Christmas season abound in love for you and yours!
Let us pray,
O God, who through your son raised up your eternal light for all nations, grant that your people may come to acknowledge the full splendor of their Redeemer, that, bathed ever more in his radiance, they may reach everlasting glory. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.
