Fifth Consideration. On God’s Eternal Love for Us.
Consider the eternal love that God hath borne you; for long before Jesus Christ suffered for you upon the Cross as man, His Divine Majesty had destined you to life, and loved you exceedingly. But when did He begin to love you? When He began to be God; and when did He begin to be God? Never: He hath ever been so, without beginning and without end; and thus He hath ever loved you; and thus it is from all eternity that His love hath prepared for you the graces and favours He hath bestowed upon you. He saith by the Prophet: _I have loved thee_ (He speaketh to you as to any other) _with an everlasting charity, and I have mercifully drawn thee unto me._ He hath therefore thought, among other things, to make you resolve well to love and serve Him.
O God! what resolutions are these which God hath thought, pondered, and planned from all eternity! How dear and precious ought they to be to us! What should we not suffer rather than lose any of them? Nay, surely, we should lose none of them, though the whole world should perish; for all the world together is not worth one soul, and a soul is worth nothing without our resolutions.
Consider the eternal love that God hath borne you; for long before Jesus Christ suffered for you upon the Cross as man, His Divine Majesty had destined you to life, and loved you exceedingly. But when did He begin to love you? When He began to be God; and when did He begin to be God? Never: He hath ever been so, without beginning and without end; and thus He hath ever loved you; and thus it is from all eternity that His love hath prepared for you the graces and favours He hath bestowed upon you. He saith by the Prophet: _I have loved thee_ (He speaketh to you as to any other) _with an everlasting charity, and I have mercifully drawn thee unto me._ He hath therefore thought, among other things, to make you resolve well to love and serve Him.
O God! what resolutions are these which God hath thought, pondered, and planned from all eternity! How dear and precious ought they to be to us! What should we not suffer rather than lose any of them? Nay, surely, we should lose none of them, though the whole world should perish; for all the world together is not worth one soul, and a soul is worth nothing without our resolutions.