Transcript

Loving God is the simplest thing in the world, but it can also be one of the hardest things in the world.

Um, love for God has to have a transfer, a five-foot-three transfer, from my head to my feet, because it's not just a mental exercise.

It is hard physical work, day in and day out.

Jesus said on the night He was betrayed, If you love me, keep my commandments.

If you love me, keep my commandments.

And so, it's very clear to me, reading that now, though it wasn't always, is the best way to show Him our love isn't just through praise and worship, which is very important, isn't just through talking about my faith, isn't just honoring His name, but it's doing what Jesus would do, doing what He's commanded us to do.

And in all the arguments between Christian traditions about faith and works, I think this gets lost sometimes.

The, the sense that, that when we talk about faith, we're talking about professing our faith and ideas in our mind, and that works is only talking about some kind of meriting the love of God or earning the love of God.

But actually, it all goes back to, If you love me, keep my commandments.

That the works must flow.

The, the faith that shows itself working through love, as Saint Paul put it.

And I've come to see that in my Catholic faith more and more, how despite the attitudes people may have about the rules or regulations or the requirements or, or the, some notion that somehow we're earning our salvation.

We know it's grace.

We know it's a free gift of God.

The only way to make it real in our lives is to obey His commands, to do what Jesus tells us, to do what He himself would do.

Jesus tells us in the Gospel of John that if we love Him, we will obey His commandments.

And Saint John echoes this in his first epistle when he says that, The love of God is this, that we obey Him, that we keep His commandments.

And John goes on further to say that, His commandments are not burdensome.

And so as Catholics when we think about loving God, we necessarily have to think about our relationship to the Church's teachings.

If we really love Him, then we'll make every effort to follow the teachings of our Lord that have been enshrined within the teachings of His one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

Beautiful thing about Catholicism as well is that it gives us so many other ways that we can love God beyond obedience.

Different prayers and devotions, uh, that the Church has practiced over the years, over the centuries, help to stir up the love of God within us, so that we can adore Him as we should.

I think one of the most important things that we can do to show our love for God, in addition to being obedient to His church, is simply by going to pray, especially when we go to adoration and we're there with Him in His presence.

I have to believe that, that God rejoices when we make that decision to pray, that we make the decision to go and, and be in His presence, to spend time with Him, just like we would spend time with any of our friends.