St Mary of the Cross MacKillop speaks of God’s love for us. “God has done wonders for us … A certain sense of God’s wonderful love strengthens me.”

The passionate Apostle St Paul offers this beautiful passage from his letter to Corinthians: ‘You are God’s love letters, written not with ink, but with the love called the Holy Spirit, written not on stone, but on the pages of your human heart.’ [2 Corinthians 3:3]

English Dominican priest and theologian Herbert McCabe wrote, ‘God is helplessly and hopelessly in love with us. He does not care whether we are sinners or not… We cannot ever change God’s mind about us. He is simply in love with us always. What God does again and again is change our minds about him. That is what our forgiveness is. We are not forgiven because we confess our sins. We confess our sins because we are already and always forgiven. And we gather to celebrate that freedom’ [Faith within Reason].

Whilst I have long accepted the truth that God loves me, it took a lesson from a 5-year-old child, uttering the most profound words I ever heard, to bring me to the reality of the depth and richness of God’s love. “Poppy, God must really love us, because He made this country so beautiful!”

At age 5, in just 13 simple insightful, Spirit-filled words, my granddaughter summarised the entire love story of the theology of creation, love and grace! It was for me an amazing combination of an AHA! and a WOW! – a single moment which turned my whole world upside down by challenging decades of learned teachings and beliefs, sending me on a new, exciting journey of discovery towards a fuller understanding of creation and incarnation, to the revelation that the greatest love story ever is a never-ending story!

“God must really love us” – If ever there was a message that bears repeating repeatedly, it is this: God loves you. You need to hear it, over and over, until it really sinks in. God loves you. God is crazy about you. So much so that God made you in God’s own image. “God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him… … as he is, so are we in this world”. [1 John 4: 16-17]

You were created as a special purpose of his love. God wanted to make you to express his love. God made you so he could love you.

Stay with that, dwell on it… Tap into it… Really allow it to soak in; it can make all the difference in loving others. BELIEVE it!

If we needed more proof of the truth of God’s love for us, hear this: “For this is how God loved the world: he gave his only Son ...” [John 3:16]. Jesus came to earth to serve, to show God’s true love to all people. He did not spare himself in his care for others, revealing loving compassion to all and proving the extent of his love when he laid down his life, that we might be redeemed. An instrument of death – the Cross – is the greatest possible symbol of true love. Jesus gave ALL for us!

To fall in love with the world is to fall in love with God. With creation as a love story the world can be seen as a good, sacred place. Pope Francis invites us to see the world as our mother, our sister. This sacred Earth is the womb from which the whole Earth was born. It is divine love itself incarnate, the very heart of God in time and space.

I am loved by a loving God, who is LOVE, and that love pours down and over me like a cascading, never-ending torrent, soaking into me and flowing out.

One thing we know for sure about our God: …. Our God, who loves us from eternity to eternity, wants to give us life for eternity [Henri Nouwen].

Our baptismal vows commit us to give ‘all our heart and mind and soul and strength’ to bring about the reign of God’s love. We cannot be content till we see the whole world opening its arms to embrace God. Nothing less can satisfy the hunger and thirst in our hearts.

In the hunger and thirst for more we draw closer to God. It is through the need for God and desire for more we come to the realisation that the very need is the key to knowing God more intimately, the greatest of gifts we can possess.

St Mary MacKillop offers further inspiration: “God’s love is too deep for words to express.”

God is Love … … so are you! Never forget: God loves you.

Have a golden day. Treasure life!