First, God's love always precedes us. "In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins" (1 Jn 4:10). One time when I began a retreat, and I was all fired up to pray, fast, discern, etc., the director said very simply: "Let Jesus love you." It was exactly what I needed to hear.

"We have been given two assurances in life: that we are infinitely loved, and that we have the capacity to love infinitely." We are being called to enter into unlimited love, which is all-consuming. We are to let love take over our life so that every thought, word, action, emotion, are in Jesus and for him through the Holy Spirit. We are to become love, just as God is. What else could it mean to "participate in the divine nature" (2 Pet 1:4)? We can't do it - but God can! We just need to take small steps into that love, and desire to know and participate in it in the deepest possible way. Let's not sell ourselves short!

How? The first and most important step is to know and believe the love God has for us. "So we know and believe the love God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him" (1 Jn 4:16). How easy it is to doubt! We've all had experiences of being disappointed by human love, when someone fell short of what we expected in their love. Human beings are imperfect, but Jesus' love is so perfect, so total, so completely committed, never failing or disappointing in any way. If we think he has let us down, it is only our limited vision.

How could the Father not want us to know his love? I used to think that somehow it was more heroic to become holy without experiencing God's love, which I thought of as a "warm fuzzy." One of the biggest healings in my life was when I came to know that God wants us to experience his love - this is the only way we can become holy. It is much deeper than a warm fuzzy. The paradox is that we can only know it when we recognize our own poverty. The next step is to abide in that love, to drink it in every day, e.g., "sunbathing" in the presence of the Lord. "Love is the answer to all our problems" - God's love, if we abide in it.