How Do We Love God?
How Do We Love God?
A lecture delivered by His Holiness the Pope on Friday 23/8/1968
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You cannot keep in your heart the love of God and the love of the world together…
If you want to love God, do not love the world. Because the Scripture says: “Do not love the world nor the things in the world.” “For the love of the world is enmity with God.” “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
The love of the world is the greatest competitor to God in your heart. If you want to love God, the desires of the world must be trivial to you, because what fellowship has light with darkness? Therefore the Apostle Paul says, “I have lost all things, and I count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ”…
The Church stood at the peak of its love for God in the first century, in the age of martyrdom and in the era of the flourishing of monasticism. In both matters—martyrdom and monasticism—the Church’s asceticism toward the world and its desires appeared.
The martyrs were singing while on their way to death, and they were chanting in prisons with joy. Why? Because the Church was an ascetic Church; it did not love the world and what is in it. All the people were selling everything they had, bringing it and laying it at the apostles’ feet.
Our problem in this generation is that we want to enter Christ through the wide gate… We want to combine God and the world.
The wide gate does not lead to the love of God. In order to reach the love of God, feel the contemptibility and triviality of the world, and the triviality of the flesh and matter. If you want a beautiful chapter about this, it is the Book of Ecclesiastes…
A book written by Solomon the Wise, the richest of the people of the earth and the greatest among them in status, and no one reached his level. This man says in chapter two:
“I planted vineyards for myself; I made gardens and parks for myself… I made pools of water for myself… I acquired male and female servants… I also had possessions of herds and flocks… I gathered for myself silver and gold and the special treasures of kings and provinces. I acquired male singers and female singers and the delights of the sons of men, a lady and ladies… And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them…”
After all these pleasures of the world, what does Solomon say?
“Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done. And behold, all was vanity and grasping for the wind, and there was no profit under the sun.”
However much you live in the world, will you take from it more than Solomon?!
Behold, the experience of Solomon says it frankly: “All is vanity…” If you want to love God, do not deceive yourself.
As long as the world is sweet in your eyes, you will not realize the love of God. Feel the triviality of the world, and you will see the love of God filling your heart…
What is the meaning of the Scripture saying, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart”?
It means that you do not leave any part of your heart for the world… The love of the world enters your heart when your love for God decreases…
In order to love God, remember the lives of the saints who despised the world; then asceticism toward the world will enter your hearts… Saint Abba Anthony, the demons used to throw gold before him on the sand, and he would not look at it.
When the Church recites to you at the end of the Catholic Epistle, “Do not love the world nor the things in the world,” it does not do that in vain. And it does not say that to the monks only, but to all people…
Among the reasons that make the love of God fill your heart is remembering God’s love for you and His benefactions toward you…
Sit with yourself and remember God’s benefactions toward you from your birth until now. Remember God’s covering over you and His compassion.
If you remember one good deed that God has done with you, you would love God. What then if you remember all the benefactions of God throughout your life?
The sinful woman loved much, because she remembered that much had been forgiven her. Remember your sins which the Lord has forgiven you—your sins which, if people knew them, they would not greet you nor allow you into their homes…
Whenever you forget God’s benefactions, your heart becomes hardened, as one ungrateful. It is enough that the Lord has kept us until this hour…
It is astonishing that God still does good to us, despite our sins, and did not wish to take our souls while we were clothed with sin… The wondrous loving God who still covers, hides, and conceals… and yet we complain!
Our whole life, O Lord, is not enough to thank You…
Every blessing that comes to you, return it to God… Do not attribute it to people nor to yourself, but return all the credit to the grace of the Lord working in you and working for you…
An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – in Al-Keraza Magazine – Year Eight (Issue Forty-Five) 11-11-1977
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