Choose a topic from Part 1:
1. Where there is will there is love, for love is the fundamental act of will. Since God is will, God is love.
2. God loves all existing things, that is, things that have positive being. For these things exist by God's will, that is, by his love. To love a thing is to will the thing and to will good to it. God wills the existence, essence, and perfections of existing things; hence he loves these things. God's love is not like human love which is attracted to things by the good it finds in them; God's love causes the good in things.
3. God loves some things more than others inasmuch as he confers more perfection on some things than on others. A plant has more perfection than a lifeless body; an animal has more perfection than a plant; a human being has more perfection than an animal. In each case, greater perfection means greater love of God for that reality.
4. God wills or loves the better things more than others inasmuch as these better things have more good from the divine will.
"It is not God's will that we should abound in spiritual delights, but that in all things we should submit to his holy will."
Blessed Henry Suso
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"The supreme perfection of man in this life is to be so united to God that all his soul with all its faculties and powers are so gathered into the Lord God that he becomes one spirit with him, and remembers nothing except God, is aware of and recognises nothing but God, but with all his desires unified by the joy of love, he rests contentedly in the enjoyment of his Maker alone."
St Albert the Great
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"God looks neither at long nor beautiful prayers, but at those that come from the heart."
The Cure D'Ars
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