Vigils Reading – St Alphonsus Ligouri

THE FULLNESS OF HIMSELF

From a sermon by St Alphonsus Ligouri5

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All holiness and perfection of soul lies in our love for Jesus Christ our

God, who is our Redeemer and our supreme good. It is part of the love of God

to acquire and to nurture all the virtues that make one perfect.

Has not God in fact won for himself a claim on all our love? From all

eternity he has loved us. And it is in this vein that he speaks to us: “O consider

carefully that I first loved you. You had not yet appeared in the light of day, nor

did the world yet exist, but already I loved you. From all eternity I have loved

you.”

Since God knew that we are enticed by favors, he wished to bind us to his

love by means of his gifts: “I want to catch mortals with these snares, these

chains of love in which they allow themselves to be entrapped, so that they will

love me.” And all the gifts which he bestowed on us were given to this end. He

gave us a soul, made in his likeness, and endowed with memory, intellect and

will; he gave us a body equipped with the senses; it was for us that he created

heaven and earth and such an abundance of things. He made all things out of

love for us, so that all creation might serve us, and we in turn might love God

out of gratitude for so many gifts.

But God did not wish to give us only beautiful creatures; the truth is that

to win for himself our love, he went so far as to bestow upon us the fullness of

himself. The eternal Father went so far as to give us his only Son. When he saw

that we were all dead through sin and deprived of his grace, what did he do?

Compelled, as the Apostle says, by the superabundance of his love for us, he

sent his beloved Son to make reparation for us and to call us back to a sinless

life.

By giving us his Son, whom he did not spare precisely so that he might

spare us, he bestowed on us every good: grace, love and heaven; for all these

goods are certainly inferior to the Son: He who did not spare his own Son, but

handed him over for all of us; how could he fail to give us along with his Son

all good things?

5 The Liturgy of the Hours – vol. III – pg 1568 – Catholic Book Publishing Co – New York – 1975.11