Love is a strong force

“I see clearly with the interior eye, that the sweet God loves with a pure love
the creature that He has created, and has a hatred for nothing but sin,
which is more opposed to Him than can be thought or imagined.”

St. Catherine of Genoa


(Da with a tired Mayor and Sheriff / Julie Cook / 20201)

“Love is a strong force — a great good in every way;
it alone can make our burdens light, and alone it bears in equal balance
what is pleasing and displeasing.
It carries a burden and does not feel it; it makes all that is bitter taste sweet.
Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing higher, nothing stronger, nothing larger,
nothing more joyful, nothing fuller, nothing better in heaven or on earth; f
or love is born of God and can find its rest only in God above all He has created.
Such lovers fly high, run swiftly and rejoice.
Their souls are free; they give all for all and have all in all.
For they rest in One supreme Goodness above all things,
from Whom all other good flows and proceeds.
They look not only at the gifts, but at the Giver, Who is above all gifts.”

Thomas à Kempis, p. 108
An Excerpt From
Imitation of Christ

gain greater than loss

“I see clearly with the interior eye, that the sweet God loves with a pure love the creature
that He has created, and has a hatred for nothing but sin,
which is more opposed to Him than can be thought or imagined.”

St. Catherine of Genoa


(gull along the surf / Rosemary Beach, FL /Julie Cook / 2019)

“Man threw away everything he had—his right to speak freely, his communion with God,
his time in Paradise, his unclouded life—and went out naked, like a survivor from a shipwreck.
But God received him and immediately clothed him, and taking him by the hand gradually led him to heaven.
And yet the shipwreck was quite unforgivable. For this tempest was entirely due,
not to the force of the winds, but to the carelessness of the sailor.
Yet God did not look at this, but had compassion for such a great disaster…
Why? Because, when no sadness or care or labor or toil or countless waves of desire assaulted our nature,
it was overturned and fell.
And just as criminals who sail the sea often drill through the ship with a small iron tool,
and let the whole sea into the ship from below,
so when the devil saw the ship of Adam (by which I mean his soul) filled with many good things,
he came and drilled through it with his voice alone, as if it were an iron tool,
and stole all his wealth and sank the ship itself.
But God made the gain greater than the loss, and brought our nature to the royal throne.”

St. John Chrysostom, p. 19
An Excerpt Frp,
A Year with the Church Fathers