Love?

[the_rev]

I was wondering if the pham could help me out here....

I was wondering if you guys and gals could help me compile the following things on love?

Church teachings

Saints Quotes

Prayers

Enyclicals on Love

Catholic Books and Websites about Love

Bible Verses on Love...

Anything else that deals with love.

Your help is greatly appreciated.

[StColette]

Saints, Blesseds, Bishops, etc.

'The love of Christ drives us on.' St Paul the Apostle

Consider what is said to you: Love God. If you say to me, "Show me who I am to love," what shall I say if not what St. John says, "No one has ever seen God!" But in case you should think that you are completely cut off from the sight of God, he says, "God is love, and he who remains in love remains in God." Love your neighbor, then, and see within yourself the power by which you love your neighbor; there you will see God as far as you are able. -- ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO

The more we love of God, the more we will want to love God. – ST. JOAQUINA

My commonest attitude is this simple attentiveness, an habitual, loving turning of my eyes to God. – BROTHER LAWRENCE
If we love and desire to give ourselves to God, we are bound to give ourselves to the whole world. --EVELYN UNDERHILL

I cannot think of conversing with you, my Lord and my God, without desiring to melt like wax in the fire of Your divine love, and to overcome all that is earthly in me by loving You. --ST. TERESA OF AVILA

So abandon yourself utterly for the love of God, and in this way you will become truly happy. --BLESSED HENRY SUSO

Learn to defend your convictions without hating your adversaries and love those who think differently from yourselves. --BLESSED FREDERIC OZANAM

Where there is no love, pour love in, and you will pull love out. – ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS

When we cast our faults into the devouring fire of Love with total childlike trust, how would they not be consumed, so that nothing is left of them? – ST. THERESE OF LISIEUX

We go because we have been sent. We go because we have been loved by God. We go in order to love in return. -- BISHOP GEORGE MARSKELL

We cannot know whether we love God, although there may be strong reasons for thinking so, but there can be no doubt about whether or not we love our neighbor. -- ST. THERESE OF LISIEUX

If obedience is the expression of your love of God, you cannot be called upon in virtue of that obedience to go against the will of God. Your obedience is love. Your obedience is liberty. – HUBERT VAN ZELLER

It is only because of your love that the poor will forgive you the bread you give them. -- ST. VINCENT DE PAUL

Virtue is nothing but well-directed love. --ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO

A vocation is the will of God, which destines some to a special state of life distinct from the ordinary. A vocation is a sign of love of the heavenly Father, who entrusts a person with a mission that is special... ---VENENERABLE FATHER JAMES ALBERIONE

Do small things with great love. --MOTHER TERESA OF CALCUTTA

Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come into being. --FATHER PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN, S.J.

The greatest charism is loving, because only love reveals the truth within another person and mirrors this grace to them. --EDWARD J. FARRELL

For now, the world consists of opposites, but in the end more of those contrasts will remain. There will only be the fullness of love. How could it be otherwise? --ST. THERESA BENEDICTA OF THE CROSS (Edith Stein)

The way to love everything is to realize it might be lost. --G. K. CHESTERTON

The proof of love is in the works. Where love exists, it works great things. But when it ceases to act, it ceases to exist. -- Pope St. Gregory the Great

Love consumes us only in the measure of our self-surrender. -- St. Therese of Lisieux

To love God is something greater than to know Him. -- St. Thomas Aquinas

It is by the path of love, which is charity, that God draws near to man, and man to God. But where charity is not found, God cannot dwell. If, then, we possess charity, we possess God, for "God is Charity" (1John 4:8) -- St. Albert the Great

Nothing seems tiresome or painful when you are working for a Master who pays well; who rewards even a cup of cold water given for love of Him. -- St. Dominic Savio

Love God, serve God: everything is in that. -- St. Clare of Assisi

Go forth in peace, for you have followed the good road. Go forth without fear, for he who created you has made you holy, has always protected you, and loves you as a mother. Blessed be you, my God, for having created me. -- St. Clare of Assisi

He alone loves the Creator perfectly who manifests a pure love for his neighbor. -- St. Bede the Venerable

"For me prayer is a surge of the heart, it is a simple look towards Heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy." - Saint Therese of Lisieux

By your good example and your words, animate others to know and love God. -- St. Mary Joseph Rossello

Bible Verses

1 Cor 13:

3 If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, (love) is not pompous, it is not inflated,
5 it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury,
6 it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.
7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never fails. If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing; if tongues, they will cease; if knowledge, it will be brought to nothing.
9 For we know partially and we prophesy partially,
10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
11 When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things.
12 At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known.
13 So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Mt:5:43-48

43 ¶ You have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thy enemy.
44 But I say to you, Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you: (DRV)
45 That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh his sun to rise upon the good, and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust.
46 For if you love them that love you, what reward shall you have? do not even the publicans this?
47 And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more? do not also the heathens this?
48 Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect.

Mt:19:19:
19 Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. (DRV)

Mt:22:37:
37 Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and with thy whole mind. (DRV)

Jn:14:15:
15 ¶ If you love me, keep my commandments. (DRV)

Jn:15:9:
9 ¶ As the Father hath loved me, I also have loved you. Abide in my love. (DRV)

Jn:15:13:
13 Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends. (DRV)

Jn:15:17:
17 These things I command you, that you love one another. (DRV)

Rom:12:9:
9 Let love be without dissimulation. Hating that which is evil, cleaving to that which is good, (DRV)


1Cor:8:3:
3 But if any man love God, the same is known by him. (DRV)

Eph:5:25:
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the church and delivered himself up for it: (DRV)

Eph:5:2:
2 And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us and hath delivered himself for us, an oblation and a sacrifice to God for an odour of sweetness. (DRV)

Col:3:19:
19 Husbands, love your wives and be not bitter towards them. (DRV)

2Tm:1:7:
7 For God hath not given us the spirit of fear: but of power and of love and of sobriety. (DRV)

Jms:1:12:
12 Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for, when he hath been proved, he shall receive the crown of life which God hath promised to them that love him. (DRV)

1Jn:3:18:
18 My little children, let us not love in word nor in tongue, but in deed and in truth. (DRV)

1Jn:4:7:

7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.
8 Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.
9 In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him.
10 In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another.
12 No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us.
13 This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us, that he has given us of his Spirit.

1Jn:4:

18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love.
19 We love because he first loved us.

1 Peter 4:

8 Above all, let your love for one another be intense, because love covers a multitude of sins.

Song of Songs 4:

6
Set me as a seal on your heart,
as a seal on your arm;
For stern as death is love,
relentless as the nether world is devotion;
its flames are a blazing fire.
7
Deep waters cannot quench love,
nor floods sweep it away.
Were one to offer all he owns to purchase love,
he would be roundly mocked.

Proverbs 10:

12 Hatred stirs up disputes, but love covers all offenses

Lv:19:18:
18 Seek not revenge, nor be mindful of the injury of thy citizens. Thou shalt love thy friend as thyself. I am the Lord. (DRV)

Dt:10:19:
19 And do you therefore love strangers, because you also were strangers in the land of Egypt. (DRV)

Dt:30:16:
16 That thou mayst love the Lord thy God, and walk in his ways, and keep his commandments and ceremonies and judgments, and bless thee in the land, which thou shalt go in to possess. (DRV)

2Sm:13:2:
2 And he was exceedingly fond of her, so that he fell sick for the love of her: for as she was a virgin, he thought it hard to do any thing dishonestly with her. (DRV)

Ps:31:23:
23 (30-24) O love the Lord, all ye his saints: for the Lord will require truth, and will repay them abundantly that act proudly. (DRV)

Ps:37:28:
28 (36-28) For the Lord loveth judgment, and will not forsake his saints: they shall be preserved for ever. The unjust shall be punished, and the seed of the wicked shall perish. (DRV)

Ps:84:11:
11 (83-12) For God loveth mercy and truth: the Lord will give grace and glory. (DRV)

Ps:97:10:
10 (96-10) You that love the Lord, hate evil: the Lord preserveth the souls of his saints, he will deliver them out of the hand of the sinner. (DRV)

Ps:145:20:
20 (144-20) The Lord keepeth all them that love him; but all the wicked he will destroy. (DRV)

Prv:21:17:
17 ¶ He that loveth good cheer, shall be in want: he that loveth wine, and fat things, shall not be rich. (DRV)

Prv:22:11:
11 ¶ He that loveth cleanness of heart, for the grace of his lips shall have the king for his friend. (DRV)

Prv:27:5:
5 ¶ Open rebuke is better than hidden love. (DRV)

Sg:2:5:
5 Stay me up with flowers, compass me about with apples: because I languish with love. (DRV)

Sg:4:7:
7 Thou art all fair, O my love, and there is not a spot in thee. (DRV)

Sg:8:7:
7 Many waters cannot quench charity, neither can the floods drown it: if a man should give all the substance of his house for love, he shall despise it as nothing. (DRV)

Hos:14:4:
4 ¶ (14-5) I will heal their breaches, I will love them freely: for my wrath is turned away from them. (DRV)

[StColette]

TRUE HUMAN LOVE REFLECTS THE DIVINE
Pope John Paul II
Asti, Italy
September 25, 1993

Dear Married Couples,

1. It gives me great joy to meet you in this cathedral, where you
frequently gather with your Bishop and priests for the Married Couples'
Mission in which you are involved, and which will end at Pentecost next
year. I am even more delighted to be doing so in the company of Cardinal
Angelo Sodano, an illustrious son of your land.

I greet dear Bishop Severino Poletto, your dynamic Pastor, and I thank
him for the words he has addressed to me. I also greet the married couples
who, on your behalf, have expressed sentiments of devoted affection to me,
explaining the interesting pastoral enterprise in which you are involved.
You are aiming at strengthening your links with Christ, deepening his
message by paying special attention to "the Gospel of marriage."

Your experience is very timely. The Church and the world today more
than ever need married couples and families who generously let themselves
be schooled by Christ.

The many sad aspects of our time and the unprecedented forms of
violence that unfortunately mark it are ultimately explained by the closure
of hearts to God's love. How urgent then is the task of believers, above
all of Christian families, to restore to today's society the necessary
anchoring of faith and love in the safe haven of God's word.

The love experienced within the family offers a favourable climate
where that personal relationship with God which is the source of authentic
individual and community renewal can take root and develop.

Obviously this implies that it is genuine love. Often, unfortunately,
in the hedonistic culture we experience today, it is rather its caricature
and even its betrayal that are labeled with the name of love.
Appropriately, the biblical passage just proclaimed is, in two instances,
concerned with clarifying the true meaning of love.

2. "In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his
only Son into the world so that we might have life through him" (1 Jn 4:9).

Here is love at its source. Love is the gift of self. It means
emptying oneself to reach out to others. In a certain sense, it means
forgetting oneself for the good of others.

Authentic human love reflects within itself the logic of the divine.
In this perspective, the duty of conjugal fidelity can be fully grasped.
"You are everything to me, I give myself totally to you, for ever": this is
the commitment that springs from the heart of every person who is sincerely
in love.

Fidelity! Next to this comes fruitfulness, another typical aspect of
the relationship between spouses. Is there not a link between the
demographic decline and the alarming phenomenon of a considerable number of
couples between whom love so easily withers and dies?

Dear married couples, do not be afraid! You are living the greatness
of love animated by the generous desire to see it spread and virtually
incarnated in the faces of your children. When a couple refuses to
collaborate with God to transmit the gift of life, they have great
difficulty in finding in themselves the resources to sustain mutual
understanding.

3. The biblical text continues: "In this is love: not that we have
loved God, but that he loved us" (1 Jn 4:10).

God's love is totally gratuitous. Such therefore should be the love
of a couple and the relationship between the members of a family. By
virtue of love the parents will be able to devote their best energies to
the work of bringing up their children, assuring them of consistent
guidance and surrounding them with caring and respectful affection. In
turn, the children will find in love the deepest motivation for a
responsible, docile and grateful attitude towards their parents. Love
drawn from God's heart spurs the whole family to find the time to attend to
the elderly, to devote themselves to the sick, to be involved in the
difficult situations around them, including regional problems and the more
general problems of the nation. The family does not live its vocation to
the full if it is not open to the needs of the community. When its members
seal themselves off in a sort of group selfishness, they automatically
deprive themselves of the opportunity to grow in love and thus to
experience true joy.

4. Dear married couples, the presence of so many of you and your
children fills my heart with emotion. Allow me to embrace you with
affection. At the end of our meeting I should like to leave you two
"assignments" in the Lord's name.

I draw one from the recommendation contained in the First Letter of
Peter: "Come to him, [Christ] a living stone" (1 Pet 2:4). Yes, dear
brothers and sisters, make sure that Christ the Lord is your teacher and
also your children's.

It is from him that you should draw the right criteria for direction
and discernment in every situation.

Forcefully resist the divorce mentality that disrupts God's plan for
marriage as an indissoluble covenant of love.

Do not let into your homes that permissive culture which allows
everything, even the suppression of life before it blossoms or before it
declines and comes to an end naturally.

5. The other assignment concerns your responsibility to proclaim the
Gospel.

Be evangelizing communities, able to transmit and radiate the Gospel!
Is not this the goal of the Married Couples' Mission in which you are
involved? Have the courage of the Gospel!

I bless you, dear friends, and I encourage you to continue in your
providential initiative, hoping that the missionary concern that motivates
you will continue to shape the entire pastoral activity of the Diocese.

Dear brothers and sisters! I entrust each one of you, your children,
your families, your projects, to the love of the Father, and I invoke the
protection of your patron saints and the motherly intercession of our Lady
on your homes.

My blessing to all of you!

I must say that the expression "Married Couples' Mission" is very
thought-provoking because usually, when we think of mission and
missionaries, we are referring to those who go to distant lands. Sometimes
married couples do too.

Instead today, after the Second Vatican Council, we are very aware of
the mission that involves all Christians. We are all missionaries and the
family's mission is irreplaceable. It is irreplaceable if we consider it
as the fundamental cell of that larger society, for the Church, for
evangelization and for the new evangelization.

We also know from experience and from tradition, how much all of us,
Bishops, Cardinals and the Pope himself, owe to our family, to our parents,
our teachers in the faith, in human and Christian nobility and in the
virtues. We are indebted to them, and first and foremost to God, but we
are also indebted to our many brothers and sisters, and above all to our
parents who gave us life and raised us. Human life must be reared not only
in the physical and biological dimension, but also in the spiritual.

This is the irreplaceable evangelization that takes place in the
family and to which you are called. This is why, although you do not
travel to distant lands, you are the apostles, evangelizers and
missionaries of your own families.

For this, the missionary spirit is necessary, the very spirit of the
Apostles but also of our parents and grandparents, who knew how to make the
family a domestic Church.

This is a lovely expression that we have inherited from the Fathers of
the Church. We have the universal Church, the diocesan and the parish
Church, but the domestic Church is irreplaceable.

I hope that all of you, fathers, mothers, and all your children, will
form this domestic Church to be a community mission. It happens through
this communion of individuals which is specific to the family, between the
couple and then between the generations.

I thank you for this meeting, I entrust you to the protection of the
Holy Family, a family in which the Son of God was born and brought up as a
man, as a human child. This is a wonderful reality. Be devoted to the
Holy Family, Jesus, Mary and Joseph. I entrust all those present and all
the families of your city and your Diocese to them.

[url="http://www.rc.net/rcchurch/popes/johnpaul/jp2mar.txt"]http://www.rc.net/rcchurch/popes/johnpaul/jp2mar.txt[/url]

[StColette]

From St. Augustine Writings: Love Never Faileth

LOVE NEVER FAILETH. (ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE - BOOK I - CHAP. 38)

But sight shall displace faith; and hope shall be swallowed up in that perfect bliss to which we shall come: love, on the other hand, shall wax greater when these others fail. For if we love by faith that which as yet we see not, how much more shall we love it when we begin to see! And if we love by hope that which as yet we have not reached, how much more shall we love it when we reach it! For there is this great difference between things temporal and things eternal, that a temporal object is valued more before we possess it, and begins to prove worthless the moment we attain it, because it does not satisfy the soul, which has its only true and sure resting-place in eternity: an eternal object, on the other hand, is loved with greater ardor when it is in possession than while it is still an object of desire, for no one in his longing for it can set a higher value on it than really belongs to it, so as to think it comparatively worthless when he finds it of less value than he thought; on the contrary, however high the value any man may set upon it when he is on his way to possess it, he will find it, when it comes into his possession, of higher value still.

[StColette]

"On Loving God" St. Bernard of Clairvaux

[url="http://www.hismercy.ca/content/ebooks/On.Loving.God-St.Bernard.of.Clairvaux.pdf"]http://www.hismercy.ca/content/ebooks/On.L...f.Clairvaux.pdf[/url]

" The Living Flame of Love" St. John of the Cross

[url="http://www.karmel.at/ics/john/fl.html"]http://www.karmel.at/ics/john/fl.html[/url]

Treatise on the Love of God Francis de Sales, St. (1567-1622)

[url="http://www.ccel.org/ccel/desales/love.html"]http://www.ccel.org/ccel/desales/love.html[/url]

Revelations of Divine Love Julian, of Norwich, b. 1343

[url="http://www.ccel.org/ccel/julian/revelations.html"]http://www.ccel.org/ccel/julian/revelations.html[/url]

Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love - Saint Augustine

[url="http://www.ccel.org/ccel/augustine/enchiridion.html"]http://www.ccel.org/ccel/augustine/enchiridion.html[/url]

Theological Virtue of Love

[url="http://newadvent.org/cathen/09397a.htm"]http://newadvent.org/cathen/09397a.htm[/url]

Fire of Love - Rolle de Hampole, Richard

[url="http://www.ccel.org/ccel/rolle/fire.html"]http://www.ccel.org/ccel/rolle/fire.html[/url]

Light, Life, and Love

Inge, William Ralph (1860-1954)
Eckhart, Johannes (c. 1260-1327) (Author of section)
Tauler, John (c. 1300-1361) (Author of section)
Suso, Henry (c. 1296-1366) (Author of section)

[url="http://www.ccel.org/ccel/inge/light.html"]http://www.ccel.org/ccel/inge/light.html[/url]

Edited February 4, 2005 by StColette

[StColette]

Explanations of the Psalms [inter A.D. 392-418] ( Augustine )

[88, 2, 14] "Let us love our Lord God, let us love His Church, Him as a Father, her as a Mother; Him as a Master, her as His Handmaid; for we are children of the Handmaid herself. But this marriage is held together by great love; no one offends the one and gains favor with the other. . . . Cling, then, beloved, cling all with one mind to God our Father and to the Church our Mother."

Ignatius to the Smyrnaens

Letter to the Smyrnaens - about 110 A.D.

For I detected that you were fitted out with an unshakable faith, being nailed, as it were, body and soul to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, and being rooted in love by the blood of Christ.

Athenagoras of Athens (second half of the 2nd century), Legatio 11, 34-35

What, then, are these teachings in which we are reared? "I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven, who makes his sun to shine on the evil and on the good, and sends his rain on the just and on the unjust"

St. Basil the Great (329-379, Letter 203,2

I cannot persuade myself that without love to others, and without, as far as rests with me, peaceableness towards all, I can be called a worthy servant of Jesus Christ

St. Gregory of Nyssa, On The Lord's Prayer and the Beatitudes

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." Who are these? Those who imitate the Divine love of others, who show forth in their own life the characteristic of the Divine energy. The Lord and Giver of good things completely annihilates anything that is without affinity and foreign to goodness. This work He ordains also for you, namely to cast out hatred and abolish war, to exterminate envy and banish strife, to take away hypocrisy and extinguish from within resentment of injuries smoldering in the heart. Instead, you ought to introduce whatever is contrary to the things that have been removed. For as light follows the departure of darkness, thus also these evil things are replaced by the fruits of the Spirit: by charity, joy, peace, benignity, magnanimity, all the good things enumerated by the Apostle (Gal 5:22).

St. John Chrysostom, Homily 19 on St. Matthew: On the Lord's Prayer

How great punishment must they deserve, who, far from forgiving, even entreat God for vengeance on their enemies, and as it were diametrically transgress this law; and this while He is doing and contriving all, to hinder our being at variance one with another? For since love is the root of all that is good, He, removing from all sides whatever mars it, brings us together, and cements us to each other.

St. Gregory the Great (540-604), "Be Friends of God"

When our hearts are reluctant we often have to compel ourselves to pray for our enemies, to pour out prayer for those who oppose us. Would that our hearts were filled with love! How frequently we offer a prayer for our enemies, but do it because we are commanded to, not out of love. We ask the gift of life for them even while we are afraid that our prayer may be heard. The judge of our soul considers our hearts rather than our words. Those who do not pray for their enemies out of love are not asking anything for their benefit.

St. Maximus the Confessor (580-662), Centuries on Charity

"But I say to you," the Lord says, "love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who persecute you." Why did he command these things? So that he might free you from hatred, sadness, anger and grudges, and might grant you the greatest possession of all, perfect love, which is impossible to possess except by the one who loves all equally in imitation of God.

[phatcatholic]

--go to www.catholicculture.org
--type "love" in the search box
--search in the "library"
--search in the "liturgical" section (for prayers)
--search in the "catechism"
--dance like a banana

Edited February 4, 2005 by phatcatholic

[the_rev]

This is so cool!

This weekend I'll have to read through this and see what I want to use.