Page 3 - APPENDIX
P. 3
ON THE LOVE OF GOD
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When the love of God is at work in a soul, it at times
seems maddening, so vehement it is! Oh God, the
forcefulness of it! It is like being in the midst of a furnace that
reduces everything into ashes. However, the characteristic
effect of this love is that of driving the soul to humble itself
profoundly, lower than any other creature: of making it desire
to be held in contempt and abasement and crave a thousand
afflictions and crosses. These are the unmistakable signs that
God’s love is reigning in a soul; and this soul, so fully
possessed by divine love, breaks down and reduces to nothing
all obstacles that come in its way, threatening to impede its
pursuit of the most perfect love.
The loving soul is in love with its supreme Good, but is
always thirsting for more of it. It strives to love beyond its
powers, with an unquenchable thirst for a greater capacity for
love: she loves beyond what it lives of, nor does it live in itself
but wholly in its Beloved. Its life is a ceaseless death because,
as it does not live merely where it lives, it can be said that it
lives continually of God and in God. When our Divine
1
Redeemer was in mortal agony he cried out: I thirst . «Ah! My
1 Original in Latin “Sitio”.
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