1 John 4:8
God is LOVE
8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Love tells us much about God, because God is LOVE...
Bishop Fulton Sheen wrote this about love and how love relates to God: "..."Love was meant to be also a sign, a symbol, a messenger, a telltale of the Divine...Love is a messenger from God saying that every human affection and every ecstasy of love are sparks from the great flame of love that is God."...“Love is the key to the mystery...Love by its very nature is not selfish, but generous...It seeks not its own, but the good of others...The measure of love is not the pleasure it gives-that is the way the world judges it-but the joy and peace it can purchase for others.”..."In all human love it must be realized that every man promises a woman, and every woman promises a man that which only God alone can give, namely, perfect happiness...One of the reasons why so many marriages are shipwrecked is because as the young couple leave the altar, they fail to realize that human feelings tire and the enthusiasm of the honeymoon is not the same as the more solid happiness of enduring human love...One of the greatest trials of marriage is the absence of solitude...In the first moments of human love, one does not see the little hidden deformities which later on appear."..."Love is a mutual self-giving which ends in self-recovery."..."Joy is the happiness of love - love aware of its own inner happiness...Pleasure comes from without, and joy comes from within, and it is, therefore, within reach of everyone in the world."..."“It takes three to make love, not two: you, your spouse, and God. Without God people only succeed in bringing out the worst in one another...Lovers who have nothing else to do but love each other soon find there is nothing else...Without a central loyalty life is unfinished.”...“You must remember to love people and use things, rather than to love things and use people.”...“We become like that which we love...If we love what is base, we become base; but if we love what is noble, we become noble.”...
And Sheen adds this on love: “As all men are touched by God’s LOVE, so all are also touched by the desire for His intimacy...No one escapes this longing; we are all kings in exile, miserable without the Infinite...Those who reject the Grace of God have a desire to avoid God, as those who accept it have a desire for God...The modern atheist does not disbelieve because of his intellect, but because of his will; it is not knowledge that makes him an atheist…The denial of God springs from a man’s desire not to have a God—from his wish that there were no Justice behind the universe, so that his injustices would fear not retribution; from his desire that there be no Law, so that he may not be judged by it; from his wish that there were no Absolute Goodness, that he might go on sinning with impunity...That is why the modern atheist is always angered when he hears anything said about God and religion—he would be incapable of such a resentment if God were only a myth...His feeling toward God is the same as that which a wicked man has for one whom he has wronged: he wishes he were dead so that he could do nothing to avenge the wrong...The betrayer of friendship knows his friend exists, but he wished he did not; the post-Christian atheist knows God exists, but he desires He should not.”...“Man wants three things; life, knowledge, and love.”...“All love on this earth involves choice...When, for example, a young man expresses his love to a young woman and asks her to become his wife, he is not just making an affirmation of love; he is also negating his love for anyone else...In that one act by which he chooses her, he rejects all that is not her...There is no other real way in which to prove we love a thing than by choosing it in preference to something else...Word and signs of love may be, and often are, expressions of egotism or passion; but deeds are proofs of love...We can prove we love our Lord only by choosing Him in preference to anything else.”...“All love craves unity...As the highest peak of love in the human order is the unity of husband and wife in the flesh, so the highest unity in the Divine Order is the unity of the soul and Christ in communion.”...