God’s wants nothing from you but one thing only which includes all commandments, that is love. If you love God, you will do whatever is required from you. If you do not love Him, whatever you do will be in vain!
God wants your heart, all your heart; for He say, “My son, give Me your heart.” (Prov 23: 26) And in Moses’ Law God says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart… your soul … your strength.” (Deut 6: 5) And the Lord Christ asserted the same commandment (Mt 22). You should give Him all the heart, not a mere part; for if you give only a part, what will you do with the other parts?
Let your love for people be within your love for God.
Do not permit within your heart any love that may contradict God’s love. It will be disloyalty to God who created you, cared for you, and redeemed you. Therefore the Scripture says, “Friendship with the world is enmity with God,” (Jas 4) “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” And the church reminds us every Mass, saying, “Do not love the world or the things in the world… the world is passing away, and the lust of it.” (1 Jn 2: 15-17)
We ought not love anybody or anything more than we love God.
For the Lord says, “He who loves father or mother more than Me… son or daughter more than He is not worthy of Me.” (Mt 10: 37) And the apostles said, “We ought to obey God rather than men.” You ought not love even yourself more than God, but rather have control over yourself in obedience, deny yourself and hate yourself for the Lord’s sake. If you love God from all the heart, you will not permit anything to separate you from the Lord.
As the apostle says, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” (Rom 8: 35)
Nothing; neither tribulation, nor distress; neither things present, nor things to come, not lust, nor desire shall separate us from His love. I remember the wonderful story of that saint who was walking in the desert and two angels came around him, one on each side, but he did not get distracted from his prayer. He said, neither angels nor archangels shall separate me from the love of Christ!
Since the heart is the property of God, if we give it to something else or preferred something to Him we will be robbing God of His property (Mal 4).
That is why the souls that love God are compared to virgins (Song 1; Mt 25; 2 Cor II). The reason is that a virgin does not give herself to anyone. This applies to both the married and the unmarried, so long as the heart is devoted to God alone. The virgin in the Song said, “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.” She did not say, “my Lord” or “my God”, because of the love that makes us call Him “our Father”.
It is exchanged love between God and the human soul.
For such love Paul the Apostle said, “I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ.” (Phil 3: 8) we ought to empty our hearts from any other love that God’s for the need is for One.
Any love that may take you away from God’s love is sinful and strange love.
Do flee from any love that competes God in your heart. However, you can love people in Christ Jesus who loved them, but not more than you love Him. You can even love the sinful world to lead it to God’s love.
Religion, my brethren, is not mere wrong and right, commands and prohibitions, or law and grace. It is rather love for God and for people, and from such love good issues out.
If you do not love God and people, you will not be a pious person even though you practice prayers, fasts, readings, meditations, giving tithes, ministering, and preaching.
God wants love, not mere practices
He does not want to force you to obey His commandments and appear righteous in your own eyes. The love He requires is an enjoyment He offers you that you may feel happy if your life is pure and spiritual.
If you love God, you will like to talk with Him and to pray.
You will find pleasure in talking with Him. You will long to be in His presence all the time. You will have spiritual satisfaction as that which David described in (Ps 63). Does prayer fill you, comfort you, give you pleasure, and lifts you high up? Does every word have a sweet taste in your mouth and mind, and is it a source of meditations? Or do you resist and force yourself to pray, or find excuses for not praying? If such is the case you actually do not love God! When then will you love Him and love Prayer?
If you do not love God, you have not known Him yet!
The knowledge of God is for beginners, but the perfect are required to abide in Him, as He says, like a branch in the vine (Jn 15: 4).
You are not strange to God, nor His love strange to you.
You are His son, and a son is supposed to love his Father. You are a temple of His Holy Spirit. He is the head and you are a member of His body. Indeed, it is a great mystery (Eph 5)!
If true love for God is abiding in Him, sin therefore is separation from Him, for there is no communion between light and darkness.
Who loves God will not sin, because love prevents him from disobeying God.
Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin (1 Jn 3:5). His nature no more accepts sin. He abstains from sinning not for fear of punishment or hell, but due to his love for God and for good.
Who loves God will necessarily love good and holiness.
One’s love for God leads to love of virtue, and the opposite is true. As a person loves God he goes beyond struggling against sin and rather shrinks from it for he abides in God who is Light. Because sin is darkness there is no communion between light and darkness.
Who loves God shall become a temple of the Holy Spirit who dwells in him and works with him and through him. He cannot suffer it to grieve God’s Spirit.
If one sins the Lord will say to him as He said to the angel of the church of Ephesus: “I have this against you, that you have left your first love.” (Rev 2)
On the other hand a person who truly loves God will abide in His love and in the life of holiness without which no one can see the Lord. He no more struggles to attain repentance, for he is already beyond that, but he struggles to grow in the life of righteousness, and good. It is positive struggling which is pleasing and which takes one from one step to another higher step without inner trouble. He has attained the endless spiritual Sabbath of the Lord where his soul can find rest and can enjoy doing good.
Who loves good has no need for a commandment calling him to do good, for his nature has become good like the image of God.
God becomes to such a person like a breath he breathes automatically without boasting. He does not pride himself in any virtues he has, because he considers them normal, and in his love for God he ascribes any good thing he does to Him as St. Paul said, “not I, but the grace of God which was with me.” (1 Cor 15.10).
A person who loves God has the same will of God.
In his love he says to God, “O Lord, do not permit me to want something You do not want. Let my will be one with Your will, or rather I would that I have no will at all but do what You put in my heart and my mind with all love and pleasure. Who loves God will find His commandments not heavy, and will love them. They will be a lamp to his feet and a light to his way. He will find pleasure in God’s law and will meditate in it day and night. God’s words will be to him like honey to his mouth, and like many riches (Ps 119).
God’s commandment is not hard, for in a pure heart there is no sinful desire that may resist it.
Love lifts a person above the commandment, so it is no more a burden on him. It is not a mere command, but rather a light on his way to God lest he deviates by the wiles of the enemy or by wrong thoughts. Love is the means by which God purifies his heart to conform with His heart, that he may become in God’s image and likeness.
Indeed, God in His love gave us His commandments, and we in our love obey them and rejoice in them, taking them as a message to us from God whom we love.
Who loves God finds in the commandment a guide, not a restriction to his will or freedom. Sin and bad habits only restrict man’s freedom, whereas God’s word liberates him. He finds the commandments a means for his benefit.
Who loves god likes to call all people to love Him, like John the Baptist who rejoiced when seeing people surrounding Christ, and said, “He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom… rejoices greatly.” (Jn 3: 27)
Such a person serves because He loves God and loves His kingdom and likes that His kingdom and His word spread and the numbers of those who follow His way increase. His ministry will be successful; for his love for God leads him to serve people that they may taste and see how good is the Lord. He gives out of love, not to receive a reward from God, but due to compassion in his heart towards those in need. God loves a cheerful giver (2 Cor 9:7), so who gives with love will go beyond giving the titles the first fruit, the vows, and the figures in general. He gives liberally and without reproach, and God will not ask him how much be gave but how much he loved. God will reward him for the love with which he gave, not for the amount he gave.