Monday, October 11, 2010

The Divine Maternity of Our Lady

Love is sufficient of itself; it gives pleasure by itself and because of itself.
It is its own merit, its own reward. Love looks for no cause outside itself, no
effect beyond itself. Its profit lies in the practice. Of all the movements,
sensations and feelings of the soul, love is the only one in which the creature
can respond to the Creator and make some sort of similar return however unequal
though it be. For when God loves, all He desires is to be loved in return. The
sole purpose of His love is to be loved, in the knowledge that those who love
Him are made happy by their love of Him.
-- Saint Bernard of Clairvaux