"For God so loved the world that he gave his Only Begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life."¹
With these words from the Gospel of the Mass, we are shown how the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ is the supreme manifestation of God's love for mankind. He took the initiative in love by giving us the one He loves most, the one who is the object of His favor:² His own Son. Our faith "is a revelation of the goodness, mercy, and love of God for us. God is love (cf. 1 Jn 4:16), that is, love that spreads and gives of itself; and everything is summarized in this great truth that explains and illuminates everything. It is necessary to see the history of Jesus in this light. 'He loved me,' writes Saint Paul, and each of us can and must repeat it to ourselves: 'He loved me and sacrificed Himself for me' (Gal 2:20)."³
God's love for us culminates in the Sacrifice of Calvary. God stayed the arm of Abraham when he was about to sacrifice his only son, but He did not stay the arm of those who nailed His Only Begotten Son to the Cross. That is why Saint Paul exclaims, full of hope: "He who did not spare his own Son (...), how will he not also give us everything else along with him?"⁴
Christ’s self-giving constitutes an urgent call to reciprocate that love: love is repaid with love. Man was created in the image and likeness of God,⁵ and God is Love.⁶ Therefore, the human heart is made to love, and the more it loves, the more it identifies with God; only when he loves can he be happy. And God wants us to be happy, here on earth as well. Man cannot live without love.
Personal sanctification is not centered on the struggle against sin, but on the love for Christ, who shows Himself to us as profoundly human and knowledgeable of all that is ours. God's love for men and men's love for God is a love of mutual friendship. And one of the defining characteristics of friendship is personal rapport and conversation. To love the Lord, it is necessary to know Him, to speak to Him... We know Him by meditating on His life in the Holy Gospels. In them, He shows Himself to be endearingly human and very close to our own lives. We relate to Him in prayer and in the sacraments, especially in the Holy Eucharist.
The consideration of the Sacred Humanity of the Lord—especially when we read the Gospel and when we consider the mysteries of the Rosary—continually nourishes our love for God and is a living lesson in how we are to sanctify our days. In His hidden life, Jesus Christ chose to descend to the most common aspects of human existence, to the daily life of a manual laborer supporting a family. And so we see Him for almost His entire life, working day after day, caring for the tools of the small workshop, attending with simplicity and cordiality to the neighbors who came to order a table or a beam for a new house, caring for His Mother with great affection... Thus He fulfilled the Will of His Father God during those years of His existence. Looking at His life, we learn to sanctify our own: work, family, friendship... Everything truly human can be holy; it can be a channel for our love for God because the Lord, by assuming it, sanctified it.
**HCD**