“It is not us who first loved God,” it’s the other way around: “It is He who loved us first,” Pope Francis said in his morning homily today in the Casa Santa Marta, on this feast of the Sacred Heart.
It’s because of this that the prophets spoke of the almond blossom as a symbol of God’s love, the pope explained, because the almond blossom is among the first to bloom in spring.
“God is like that: he is always first. He’s the first to wait for us, the first to love us, the first to help us,” Francis said.
“It is a love that cannot be understood. A love that surpasses all knowledge. It surpasses everything.The love of God is so great; a poet described it as a ‘bottomless sea without shores…’ This is the love that we must try to understand, the love that we receive.”
The Holy Father noted that throughout the history of salvation, the Lord has revealed his love to us: “He has been a great teacher.”
Recalling the words of the prophet Hosea, he explained that God did not reveal his love through power but “by loving His people, teaching them to walk, taking them in His arms, caring for them.”
“How does God manifest his love? With great works? No: He makes himself smaller and smaller with gestures of tenderness and goodness. He approaches His children and with His closeness He makes us understand the greatness of love.”
And we are called to carry on God’s work in our small ways, according to what Jesus taught in the Gospel: my feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, etc.
We do not need great discourse on love, but men and women “who know how to do these little things for Jesus, for the Father,” the pope said. “Our works of mercy are the continuity of this love.”
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And today we celebrate...