Learning the Love of God and Responding in Prayer

The love of God is unlike any love that comes from our hearts, for it is eternal. From eternity the Father has loved the Son and the Son the Father, and this love is also God, the Third Person of the Trinity. And it is this love which brought him to the world to redeem us by his blood. Yet since he must humble us and make our sinful hearts contrite in order to receive this love, he spoke to us from the beginning in mystery, in figures, in history mysteriously portraying what he would do in the fulness of time. And even when at last he came, still he taught in parables, until the end of his earthly ministry, when finally his disciples began to learn to love him reciprocally, and then he began to speak plainly and using no figure; and so they rejoiced on hearing this. But when they  themselves went out and preached, even then they had to bring the world to repentance and humility before they could receive his word, his love, his eternal grace. So let us gladly receive it, and now, in this unity with God, freely call upon the Father as our own Father (through the only Son), addressing him as Our Father. And the greatest thing for which could ask is God himself, and we receive him here, in the Blessed Sacrament, the Bread of Life, our daily bread. Sermon for Rogate Sunday.
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