We only love if we have first been loved. Hear what the apostle John has to say. He it was who learnt on the masters heart and resting there drank in heavenly secrets... Among the other secrets which the great seer drew from that source he showed us this: We love him because he first loved us (1 John 4:10). Ask how anyone can love God and you will find no other answer than this: God first loved us. He whom we love has given himself first. He has given himself so that we may love him. What was his gift? The apostle Paul states it more clearly: God's love has been poured into our hearts. By what means? Through us perhaps? No. Through whom then? Through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us (Romans 5:5).
Full of this testimony let us love God through God... The conclusion imposes itself on us and John states it for us still more succinctly: God is love and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him (1 John 4:16). It is not much to say, love comes from God. But who among us would dare to repeat these words: God is love? They were spoken by someone from experience. Why does the human imagination with its superficial attitude represent God to itself? Why do human beings fashion an idle according to their desire? ...God is love... We see nothing of him and yet we love him... let us seek below what we shall discover on high. Love that is attached only to physical beauty does none the less move us to more profound feelings. A sensual and lecherous man loves a woman of rare beauty. He is carried away by the loveliness of her body, yet he seeks in her, beyond her body, a response to his tender feelings for her. Suppose he learns that this woman hates him. All the fever, all the raptures that those lovely features aroused in him subside. In the presence of that being who fascinated him he experiences a revulsion of feeling. He goes away and the object of his affections now inspires him with hatred. Yet has her body changed in any way? Has her charm disappeared? No. But while burning with desire for the object that he could see, his heart was waiting for a feeling that he could not see. Suppose, on the contrary, he perceives that he is loved. How his ardor redoubles! She looks at him; he looks at her; no one sees their love. And yet it is that which is loved, although it remains invisible...
You do not see God. Love and you possess him...for God offers himself to us at once. Love me, he cries to us, and you shall possess me. You cannot love me without possessing me.
SAINT AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO Sermon 34 on Psalm 149, 2-6
