We have known the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him," reads a passage from the Mass$^1$. The fullness of divine mercy toward mankind is expressed in the sending of the Person of His Only Begotten Son. We have not only known that God loves us because this is the continuous teaching of Jesus, but His presence among us is the ultimate proof of this love: He Himself is the full revelation of God and of His love for mankind$^2$.
Saint Augustine teaches that the source of all graces is the love God has for us, which He has revealed to us not only in words but also in deeds. The supreme act of this love took place when His Only Begotten Son assumed mortal flesh and became man like us, except in sin$^3$.
Today we must ask for new light to understand, in a deeper way, God’s love for all people, for each individual. We must implore the Holy Spirit so that, through His grace and our correspondence, we may be able to say personally and with greater depth each day: I have known the love that God has for me. We will attain that wisdom—the one that truly matters—with the help of grace, by frequently meditating upon the Most Holy Humanity of Jesus: His life, His deeds, what He suffered to redeem us from the slavery in which we found ourselves, and to elevate us to a friendship with Him that will last for all eternity. The Heart of Jesus, a heart with human feelings, was the instrument united to the Divinity to express His unspeakable love to us; the Heart of Jesus is the heart of a Divine Person, that is, of the Incarnate Word, and "consequently, it represents and places before our eyes all the love that He has had for us and has for us now. And herein lies the reason why devotion to the Sacred Heart is considered, in practice, as the most complete profession of the Christian faith. Truly, the religion of Jesus Christ is entirely founded on the God-Man Mediator; so that one cannot reach the Heart of God except by passing through the Heart of Christ, according to what He Himself affirmed: I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me (Jn 14:6)".
There was not a single act of Christ’s soul or of His will that was not directed toward our redemption, toward obtaining for us all the help we need so that we never separate ourselves from Him, or to return if we have gone astray. There was not a part of His body that did not suffer for love of us. All kinds of pain, insults, and reproaches He willingly accepted for our salvation. Not a single drop of His most precious Blood was left unspilled for us.
God loves me. This is the most comforting truth of all, and the one that must have the greatest practical resonance in my life. Who can understand the deep abyss of Jesus’ goodness, manifested in the calling we have received to share in His very Life, His friendship...? A Life and a friendship that not even death will be able to break; on the contrary, it will make it stronger and more secure.
"God loves me... and the Apostle John writes: 'let us love God, then, since God first loved us.' —As if that were not enough, Jesus addresses each one of us, despite our undeniable miseries, to ask us as He did Peter: 'Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?'...
HCD