Command Me to Love Thee, O Lord!

Today's reflection will be less intellectual than my last one and will speak more to the affections than to the intellect — something we commonly call "the heart" in contemporary spiritual language. The language of the "head" and that of the "heart" are not opposed to one another; however, what each awakens within our soul is different. The mind (or the spiritual faculty known as the intellect) is ordered to truth, and above all to God as Supreme Truth; the heart, on the other hand (the spiritual faculty known as the will), was created for love, and especially for God as Supreme Love. These two faculties of our immortal human soul (intellect and will) each embrace a different — yet complementary — aspect of the mystery of God. God is Truth and God is Love. And because man was created for God, he was created to know Supreme Truth and to desire union with Supreme Love.

In Venerable Louis of Grenada's Summa of the Christian Life, the Dominican friar writes the following:

Prayer is a royal gate through which the soul enters into the Heart of God; a foretaste of the glory to come.

He then presents the reader with an absolutely sublime prayer that asks God for the grace to love Him as He deserves to be loved. This prayer is worth meditating on frequently, especially before the Blessed Sacrament:

O my Saviour, what am I that Thou shouldst command me to love Thee and shouldst have invented so many wonderful means to procure this end? What am I to Thee but labours and suffering and the Cross? And what art Thou to me but salvation and rest and all blessings? But Thou dost love me in spite of all that I am. Why then shall I not love Thee for all that Thou art to me? I do not deserve to love Thee, but Thou dost deserve to be loved. And for this reason, I do not dare ask that Thou shouldst love me, but that Thou givest me permission to dare to love Thee.

O God, Thou who art love by essence, uncreated and infinite love, from which proceeds the love of all the angels and all Thy creatures, why do I not love Thee? Why do I not burn in that fire of love which inflames the whole universe?

Prostrate in spirit and with all the reverence of which I am capable, I present myself before Thee, O my God, as one of the poorest and lowliest of Thy creatures. I place myself before the torrents of Thy mercy, the inspiration of Thy grace, and the splendours of the sun of Thy justice, which are liberally communicated to all who do not close the door of their souls to it. I place myself in Thy hands as a lump of clay; make of it, most merciful Father, that for which Thou hast created it.

Make me love Thee, O Lord. It is the greatest audacity for me, a lowly creature, to ask for such a noble love. Since I am so base, I should perhaps beg of Thee something much more humble, but what shall I do? For Thou hast commanded me to love Thee, Thou hast created me to love Thee, and Thou has threatened me if I do not love Thee. Thou didst die to make me love Thee, and Thou desirest that I should ask nothing of Thee with greater insistence than love. So much dost Thou wish me to love Thee that Thou didst institute the marvellous Sacrament of Thy Love to transform my heart into love.

In this strikingly beautiful prayer all about the love of God, Venerable Louis of Grenada calls the Holy Eucharist "the marvellous Sacrament of [His] Love" that Christ instituted in order to transform our heart into love!

In the writings of the Saints, the Blessed Sacrament shines forth brightly as the privileged subject of the love of God; it is presented as the privileged place where the love of God can be encountered more than anywhere else on this earth. The Holy Eucharist is the School of Love (Schola Amoris) because it contains God Himself who is Love Incarnate. The love of God is not an abstract reality in the Catholic Faith; there is, in fact, nothing more concrete because of the reality of the Incarnation. God — who is Pure Love — became man. From the moment of the Incarnation, Love takes on human flesh and blood. It is the Flesh and Blood of the God-Man, Jesus Christ, really and truly present in His Sacrament of Love.

In Pope Benedict XVI's post-apostolic exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis (The Sacrament of Charity), the Holy Father writes:

The Sacrament of Charity, the Holy Eucharist, is the gift that Jesus Christ makes of Himself, thus revealing to us God's infinite love for every man. [...] Jesus continues, in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, to love us to the end.

The last words of Pope Benedict XVI, "Jesus continues, in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, to love us to the end," are a reference to St. John's Gospel, Chapter 13:

Before the festival day of the pasch [Passover], Jesus knowing that His hour was come, and that He should pass out of this world to the Father: having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them unto the end. (Jn 13:1)

Christ's love of mankind "to the very end" is expressed in the most perfect way in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. This is why the Saints are unanimous in teaching that there is no greater place to seek out the love of Christ than in the Holy Sacrament of His Body and Blood. Even to this day, Christ continues to offer His Body and Blood to God the Father, in the Blessed Sacrament, in all the Tabernacles throughout the world, for the sanctification of souls and the salvation of the Church's faithful: that is, of all those who are united to the Mystical Body of Christ (the Catholic Church).

The prayer of Venerable Louis of Grenada asks, over and over again, for the grace to love God as God deserves to be loved and as He commanded to be loved. This is something that we cannot do on our own. We cannot, of our own strength, love Christ as He commanded us to love Him and how He deserves to be loved by us. For such a love is supernatural, and cannot therefore be attained solely through natural means. Hence the need to pray for grace. This grace that we seek (to love Christ as He deserves to be loved) flows from the Blessed Sacrament. The Blessed Sacrament is the Source from which all Divine Love flows and is, at the same time, the end and final destination of our love for God. It is Christ the Alpha and Christ the Omega; Christ the Lover and Christ the Beloved; Christ the beginning and Christ the end of all things. Everything has its source and its fulfillment in the Blessed Sacrament!

J.R.R. Tolkien expresses this sentiment admirably in a letter he wrote to his son Michael, wherein he shares the following:

Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the One Great Thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament. [...] There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth.... (Letter 43)

In another letter to his same son, Tolkien presents the Blessed Sacrament as the remedy to a weak, sagging faith:

The only cure for sagging or fainting faith is Communion. Though always itself, perfect and complete and inviolate, the Blessed Sacrament does not operate completely and once for all in any of us. Like the act of Faith it must be continuous and grow by exercise.

Hours spent before the Blessed Sacrament in this world, after the hours spent receiving Our Lord in Holy Communion throughout this life, are the most important hours of our earthly existence. It is there, when Christ is within us or when we are before His sacred Presence in the Tabernacle or upon the Altar, that the secrets of Heaven are opened up to our soul. More Saints have received deep insights into the mystery of God while praying before the Blessed Sacrament — or just after receiving the Blessed Sacrament in Holy Communion — than anywhere else.

This is why we must pray for the grace to love Christ. Command me to love Thee, O Lord! St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori echoes this very same sentiment in a prayer he encouraged priests to pray as a prayer of thanksgiving after offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass:

Da, ut semper dilígam Te, fac ut amem Te quantum sacérdos Te dilígere debet.

Grant that I may always love Thee; make me to love Thee as a priest is obliged to loved Thee.

We forget sometimes that every holy desire is a gift from God — including the desire to love Him — and that we cannot fulfil this desire of Divine Love without a special assistance or grace from on high. This is why we must pray for the grace to love: to love Christ as He desires to be loved, and as He deserves to be loved. If He commands us to love Him in such a way, and if we cannot love Him thusly by our own strength, then Christ will surely give us the grace to love Him as He commands, if only we ask for that grace through prayer. And what better place to beg of Our Lord the grace to love Him in this way than before the very Sacrament of His Love?

The Church sings in her traditional sacred liturgy:

Dignare me laudare te, Virgo sacrata!

Make me worthy to praise thee, O holy Virgin!

Similarly, we can sing before the Blessed Sacrament:

Dignare me amare Te, Sacramentum Divini Amoris!

Make we worthy to love Thee, O Sacrament of Divine Love!"

Dignare me amare Te