“God beholds you individually, whoever you are. God calls you by name! God sees you and understands you. God made you and God knows what is in you, all your personal feelings and thoughts, your likings and dispositions, your strengths and your weaknesses. God views you in your times of rejoicing and your days of sorrow. God sympathizes with your hopes and with you in your temptations. God is interested in your anxieties and remembrances and in all the risings and fallings of your spirit. God has numbered the hairs of your head and the inches of your height. God bears you in divine arms and takes you up and sets you down. God notes your expressions, whether you are smiling or in tears, healthy or sick. God looks tenderly upon your hands and your feet and listens to your voice and to the beating of your heart and even to your breathing. You don’t and can’t love yourself better than God loves you.” (St. John Cardinal Newman)

We need to reflect on God’s love for us. It is that which truly sustains us in being, sustains us in his divine life we share with him. He loves us in spite of our sins and failings. He loves us even when we do not love him in return. Why? God is love. His very life is love. He loves us so that in love we may find fulfillment. Our identity comes from him out of love. We are his beloved sons and daughters. He has given his all, himself in the person of Jesus, out of love. He embraced death on the cross, bearing the full weight of our sins, because he loves us. The only response that we can give is love in return. The more we grow in love towards God, the more we experience a fuller outpouring of his love for us. It is not that God loves us more at that moment, but that we open ourselves more to receive his bountiful love.