in sensing oneself to be loved one learns to love — Adolphe Monod

“As you look upon God’s love, it will communicate itself to you and will renew your entire being. It is in sensing oneself to be loved that one learns to love. Self-centeredness reigns only because we are ignorant of God’s love: “Anyone who does not love does not know God” (1 John 4:8). You will love as you have been loved. You will love God, because God has first loved you. You will love your neighbor, because God has loved you both. Do you glimpse the new life that this change opens up for you?

I see you as “imitators of God, as beloved children” (Ephesians 5:1), no longer living for anything except to pour out around you the love with which God has filled your hearts. I see you, following the example of Christ who loved you, “going about doing good” (see Acts 10:38) and finding your joy in privation, in fatigue, and in the sacrifices of charity. I see you “controlled by the love of Christ” (see 2 Corinthians 5:14); weaned from your self-will, from the love of money, and from the empty pleasures of the world; consoling the afflicted, relieving the poor, visiting the sick, and carrying Jesus Christ and all his blessings with you wherever you go.

Then the image and resemblance of God will have been formed anew in your heart! Then you will dwell in God and God in you! If being loved is the life of our soul, to love is its joy. If being loved is all the doctrine of the gospel, then to love is all of its ethic. To love as we have been loved is heaven on earth until such time as it becomes heaven in heaven.”

— Adolphe Monod, an undivided love: loving and living for Christ

so dear to God — Adolphe Monod

“If God’s Son is so great, so precious, so dear to His eyes, then what are we to Him — we for whom He has given this so great, so precious, so dear Son?



If a captain ransoms his prisoners who are held by the enemy at the price of gold, isn’t it because the freedom of his companions is just as dear to him and even more dear than the gold with which he redeems them?


If Abraham offers his son Isaac as a burnt offering, isn’t it because God’s holy will is just as dear to him and even more dear than the life of this son whom he loves so much?


If God “gives men in return for Israel, peoples in exchange for his life” (see Isaiah 43:4), isn’t it because Israel is just as dear to Him and even more dear than the men, the peoples whom He gives for their deliverance?



And if, given the alternative of either striking us while sparing His only Son or delivering up His only Son in order to spare us, the Father delivers up His Son and spares us, what can we say about the love with which he loves us?



What can we say that would not appear to be the epitome of waywardness and presumption if we did not have the truth, the evidence, the very revelation of God on our side? Whatever the case, He delivers Him up, He gives Him, He sends Him into the world — into this world that is lost through sin but, for that very reason, needs Him in order to be saved.”

— Adolphe Monod, an undivided love: loving and living for Christ