Love: A Yearning for God
My God, my Jesus, I intend to have loved you and to love you … with all the love that was, is, and will be, that could be, and should have been in time and eternity, and with all your infinite love. (OOCC, X, pp. 225 - 226; STA, 540)
Genuine friendship with God deepened St. Vincent Pallotti’s desire to love God and to give himself to God totally. His desire to love God became an inner yearning for God. Living the advice of St. Francis de Sales, St. Vincent cultivated within himself an insatiable desire to love God, so that his love for God constantly increased both in its quality and intensity. He wanted to love God at every moment of his life. He also wished that he could love God with all the love that was, is and will be in time and eternity. St. Vincent felt a sense of desperation, because he did not know how to love God as much as he should. Just like St. Peter at the Mount of Transfiguration, St. Vincent wished to pitch his tent in God’s loving presence. He believed that a person who does not love God genuinely, in fact does not live. True living implies loving and true loving implies living. Hence, St. Vincent wanted to possess within himself all the love that was present throughout eternity so that he could love God with all the love that was present in the world. This inner yearning to love God made St. Vincent Pallotti a very dynamic person. He had no time to idle away for every moment must be used to express his love for God. Thus, the inner yearning for God and the desire to give God the totality of his love were powerful spiritual forces that guided St. Vincent Pallotti both in his Christian living and apostolic undertakings.
Do I have a longing to love God? Do I acknowledge that God is infinitely worthy of my love? Do I admit true Christian living implies loving and vice versa? Does my desire to love God become a powerful spiritual force to guide me both in my Christian living and apostolic undertakings?
One thing I ask of the Lord; this I seek: To dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. (Ps. 27: 4)