“Shall I tell you why and how we should love God? In a word, the reason for loving God is simply God Himself, and the measure is to love Him without measure” (St Bernard of Clairvaux).
St Bernard hit the nail on the head! Surely we could find countless reasons why we should love God, and we would never finish listing them. But they all boil down to the fact that we love God simply because He is God, and we love our Father for who He is. As we discover this more and more, we will cry out from the depths of our hearts: “O God, I thank you for being our Father and for being as you are”.
Then we lack nothing and our soul is filled with great peace. Again and again we lift up our eyes with gratitude to our Father and Creator, while we increasingly perceive His love and goodness towards us, admire His wisdom and rejoice in intimate communion with Him.
The second part of the saint’s sentence is as apt as the first. Love of God has no measure. It can never be exceeded, because He is faithful and will never disappoint us. If such fears sometimes arise in people, it is only because they do not yet know our Father well enough.
In our innermost being we were created for this love, a love without measure, which is only possible towards God: to give ourselves without reserve, to abandon ourselves completely, to trust without limits. This is what our soul desires. This is what our soul was created for. It is in this total surrender to our Heavenly Father that it will find its true home and discover the meaning of its existence.
God gives us this invitation, which is the greatest joy, because He is our Father and the boundlessness of our love for Him can only be surpassed by His.