How do you learn to love God?

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It’s hard for me to love Someone you don’t see. Are there any Saints that have spoken on this difficulty? I have one quote from St. Francis De Sales about this:
You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working ; and just so you learn to love God and man by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves.
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I would be happy to find more saintly insights into this.
 
Alex1 said:
It’s hard for me to love Someone you don’t see. Are there any Saints that have spoken on this difficulty? I have one quote from St. Francis De Sales about this:

I would be happy to find more saintly insights into this.
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Great question…I too would be interested in any insights…
Mary.
 
It’s hard for me to love Someone you don’t see. Are there any Saints that have spoken on this difficulty? I have one quote from St. Francis De Sales about this:
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That’s where meditation comes in.

First, to help you clearly meditate, I suggest you close your eyes, breath in for four counts, then exhale for eight. As you’re doing this, bring to your mind what it means to meditate on a mind that lets go. Know, most of us have a mechanism inside of us called the “I ‘get it’ mechanism” that doesn’t feel okay when you don’t know something for sure. This gets us into trouble because, to justify the craziest things, such as believing someone must be an angel, we make huge logical leaps. If you notice that in yourself, you have to hold yourself back, and learn to stop doing it, because it isn’t all about “getting it.” Matter of fact, there is more opinion in the world than facts, and sometimes to filter through it all, we have to give up the “I get it” mechanism.

So after meditating on “A mind that lets go,” open your eyes, and realize realize. Become aware of aware. And open your mind about opening your mind.

Then you will be more suited for seeing the good God.
 
To distill Mother Theresa:

Learn to know Him and to love Him by time spent before the Eucharist.

Learn the same in your care and expression of love for Christ in the distressing disguise of the poor. We really cannot supply for God’s want because he has none, but we can love our neighbor and by so doing out of love for God we are proving our love for God, it seems.

Margaret Mary often prayed “Christ give me a heart with which to love you, because mine is so small and poor it is not able to love you as you deserve.” (paraphrased)

Remember, love is beyond an emotion.

***The fruit of Silence is prayer. The fruit of Prayer is faith. The fruit of Faith is love. The fruit of Love is service. The fruit of Service is peace. ***
-Mother Teresa
 
JamalChristophr said:
To distill Mother Theresa:

Learn to know Him and to love Him by time spent before the Eucharist.

Learn the same in your care and expression of love for Christ in the distressing disguise of the poor. We really cannot supply for God’s want because he has none, but we can love our neighbor and by so doing out of love for God we are proving our love for God, it seems.

Margaret Mary often prayed “Christ give me a heart with which to love you, because mine is so small and poor it is not able to love you as you deserve.” (paraphrased)

Remember, love is beyond an emotion.

***The fruit of Silence is prayer. The fruit of Prayer is faith. The fruit of Faith is love. The fruit of Love is service. The fruit of Service is peace. ***
-Mother Teresa
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Thanks for the quote by St. Margaret Mary. I like that very much.
 
Alex1 said:
It’s hard for me to love Someone you don’t see. Are there any Saints that have spoken on this difficulty? I have one quote from St. Francis De Sales about this:

I would be happy to find more saintly insights into this.
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By sanctifying grace. And, the seat of charity is in the rational will, even though at times it is times intensely emotional.

Romans 5:5: The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost.
 
I think mostly by praying and spiritual reading. I’d love to know how to love God too
 
Alex1 said:
It’s hard for me to love Someone you don’t see. Are there any Saints that have spoken on this difficulty? I have one quote from St. Francis De Sales about this:

I would be happy to find more saintly insights into this.
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leaderu.com/cyber/books/imitation/imitation.html

Studying and continually putting into practice *The Imitation of Christ * causes a person to experience a great love of God, I being one of them.
 
I learned to love my husband by spending time with him, and actually, the first few months of our initial relationship was almost entirely conducted on email. I met him first, and then we grew into a loving relationship over a distance, with regular phonecalls, too.

For me, that is an echo of my loving relationship with God. I met Him and then spent time getting to know him, through the scriptures and other writings, I prayed and worshipped Him, too.

Now I’m beginning to learn about His real presence in the Eucharist, which I sadly get to but rarely. But ime, time and desire are the keys to loving God.
 
I believe that are ability to truly love God is really a grace from Him that we ought to continually pray for. Contemplative Prayer is probably the most conducive method. I often feel a great love for God using this prayer method.

To love God with all your soul, heart, mind and strength is, again, a great grace from above.
 
Great question:

Go to Adoration

Recieve the Eucharist

Pray

Fast

Feed the poor

Comfort the lonely

Go to Confession

Read the Sacred Scriptures

What I’ve found is that when I do all those things I find God there and I don’t have to go searching and I can see His love for me and for others which makes my love for Him stronger.

Edit: and after doing those things for a while I see Him more prevelantly in the day to day tasks of life.
 
Many of the posters have given true and excellent suggestions. Love of God is the work of the Holy Spirit through the means of grace which come through the sacraments.
Jesus, the HolySpirit, and the Father, God becomes the object of one’s affection, and love. The natural, and supernatural way to love, is to get to know the one who is loved. Pleasing the one you love by knowing his desires (keeping the commandments, especially the two greatest.) Sending one’s intellectual life by thinking of Him, and willing what He wills. Never diminishing your idea of Him, no matter how bad things may look. Seek signs of Him in His creation, and in one’s personal life.

I sought my soul, and my soul i could not see
I sought my God, and my God eluded me
Then I sought my neighbor, and found all three.

I find love of God a continuing, progressive and growing experience that I know will be completely fulfilled in eternity, and even here on earth we can get a small degree of that experience.
 
I found this from Mother Teresa:

The fruit of Silence is prayer.
The fruit of Prayer is faith.
The fruit of Faith is love.
 
The best way to learn to love God is learning from those who already love Him. If you do not know anyone personally, read about Teresa of Ávila, for example. Her experience was achieved through intense prayer and surrender and involves spiritual ecstasy, tears and trance. This seems like intense emotional involvement, but would be more like bliss (which I consider inferior to love) if there was no her testimony “…and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God” after angel pulled out lance from her heart in her mystical experience.

Next who comes to mind is St Gregory Palamas and his fellow hesychasts from the Orthodox Church. They practiced Prayer of the Heart: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner” and were supposed to experience the Lord’s Divine Light. This also look like bliss “only”, I don’t know more about how they describe their inner joy.

As you see, these experiences require intense, even ascetic effort.

Another famous person is Rabia al Basri, 8th century Muslim saint. She spoke about God as her Beloved who is always with her, and one of her famous quotes are in this anecdote: One day, she was seen running through the streets of Basra carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When asked what she was doing, she said,“I want to put out the fires of Hell, and burn down the rewards of Paradise. They block the way to Allah. I do not want to worship from fear of punishment or for the promise of reward, but simply for the love of Allah.”

So far we could see that love of God is not a privilege of a certain religion.

The experts may be Hindus, those Vaishnavas who practice bhakti-yoga. Bhakti means intense love of God, emotion so special that can not be felt for any other being but God, a totally new experience. They say bhakti can come only from bhakti, so it is a kind of a grace and you may get some by associating with bhaktas. Among other methods, process involves chanting the Names of the Lord (also present in Muslim mysticism, where it is known as dhikr or zikr) where Names are repeated until you start to listen and accept them, so eventually the Holy Name will descend to your heart where the miracle may happen. I agree that it is not possible to love someone that you do not know, since it would be a mere illusion, so it is required to hear and learn about God. Thus bhaktas regularly read and listen about God’s pastimes (which are many in Vaishnavism) so they may develop an initial relationship. They insist that learning this love is not introducing something new for us, rather the position of serving God in the mood of ecstatic devotion is our natural position, so we “only” have to remember who we really are - an eternal spiritual servant of God. So, ascetic practice may also help significantly, since it help us to remove material covers which cover our true identity. This makes religion a process as pleasant as healing, any progress is obvious and welcome, only thing is that it is not always easy. The saying is that, unlike material experience, spiritual is as poison at the beginning but as nectar at the end. It may be difficult to find out how to include love in other religion’s worship, but in bhakti-yoga all worship, everything they do is about bhakti, there is nothing else worth doing.
 
miodrag1963 said:
The best way to learn to love God is learning from those who already love Him. If you do not know anyone personally, read about Teresa of Ávila, for example. Her experience was achieved through intense prayer and surrender and involves spiritual ecstasy, tears and trance. This seems like intense emotional involvement, but would be more like bliss (which I consider inferior to love) if there was no her testimony “…and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God” after angel pulled out lance from her heart in her mystical experience.

Next who comes to mind is St Gregory Palamas and his fellow hesychasts from the Orthodox Church. They practiced Prayer of the Heart: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner” and were supposed to experience the Lord’s Divine Light. This also look like bliss “only”, I don’t know more about how they describe their inner joy.

As you see, these experiences require intense, even ascetic effort.

Another famous person is Rabia al Basri, 8th century Muslim saint. She spoke about God as her Beloved who is always with her, and one of her famous quotes are in this anecdote: One day, she was seen running through the streets of Basra carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When asked what she was doing, she said,“I want to put out the fires of Hell, and burn down the rewards of Paradise. They block the way to Allah. I do not want to worship from fear of punishment or for the promise of reward, but simply for the love of Allah.”

So far we could see that love of God is not a privilege of a certain religion.

The experts may be Hindus, those Vaishnavas who practice bhakti-yoga. Bhakti means intense love of God, emotion so special that can not be felt for any other being but God, a totally new experience. They say bhakti can come only from bhakti, so it is a kind of a grace and you may get some by associating with bhaktas. Among other methods, process involves chanting the Names of the Lord (also present in Muslim mysticism, where it is known as dhikr or zikr) where Names are repeated until you start to listen and accept them, so eventually the Holy Name will descend to your heart where the miracle may happen. I agree that it is not possible to love someone that you do not know, since it would be a mere illusion, so it is required to hear and learn about God. Thus bhaktas regularly read and listen about God’s pastimes (which are many in Vaishnavism) so they may develop an initial relationship. They insist that learning this love is not introducing something new for us, rather the position of serving God in the mood of ecstatic devotion is our natural position, so we “only” have to remember who we really are - an eternal spiritual servant of God. So, ascetic practice may also help significantly, since it help us to remove material covers which cover our true identity. This makes religion a process as pleasant as healing, any progress is obvious and welcome, only thing is that it is not always easy. The saying is that, unlike material experience, spiritual is as poison at the beginning but as nectar at the end. It may be difficult to find out how to include love in other religion’s worship, but in bhakti-yoga all worship, everything they do is about bhakti, there is nothing else worth doing.
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Alex1 said:
It’s hard for me to love Someone you don’t see. Are there any Saints that have spoken on this difficulty? I have one quote from St. Francis De Sales about this:

I would be happy to find more saintly insights into this.
Click to expand...
Ps 139,1-12
Matthew 10,29-31
1 John 3,1-3
Keep this fragments and remember. God see you and love very much.
You can see God works in creatures, miracles and similar.

1 John 4,20 - Anyone who says ‘I love God’ and hates his brother, is a liar, since whoever does not love the brother whom he can see cannot love God whom he has not seen.

If you just love a man - you can forget about God. If you really love God - it really loves and the man - Father John Twardowski, polish priest and poet. Really holy man, died in 2006.

For example, like you love those who we have not seen for years, or are dead. However, we do not see but we love. God has given us in the heart of desire for love.

Hold on Our Lord Jesus Christ, I pray for you. 🙂

[edit:]
*Souls who will resort to my mercy, and the souls who glorify and proclaim to others about my great mercy at the hour of death, I will make them of My infinite mercy.

The soul that trusts in my mercy is most fortunate, because I myself have take care of it.* Jesus to saint Faustina Kowalska

Try to trust, trust is a gift that only you can give to God
 
There are degrees of love.

To start, knowledge and appreciation of the other person is essential. So a certain amount of time is required for this. The more that the goodness of the other is seen, the more the attraction grows. Until a relationship is desired with the other. At which point a love for the other begins to be realized.

Then a union or friendship is desired and grows and increases, until the person wants to make the other happy. And the stronger it grows, the more the person desires to give to the other. It then begins to snowball into an all consuming love for the other. It wants to please the other that it is willing to do whatever it takes to be one with the other and to love them as much as possible, and make them happy.

In this regard it is much easier it seems to me for women to do this than men, and I believe they are much more spiritual in their composition.

So to love takes time and perserverance which at first is difficult, but later much easier when love begins to show itself.
 
This is an interesting reading, at least for me:

Can you love God in a way because you don’t have any other option.

This comes from the point that you can have infinite hope and faith in God because He is suppose to be Love.

So in the hope and faith that He loves us, and will not disappoint you, we believe in Him with all our might.

“Simon Peter answered him, "Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” John 6, 67

I believe you learn to love God from His attributes, from what He is. He is love.

I think it was to St Faustina that He stated that we should know Him through His attributes (and His known attribute is the cross (for example)).

So the understanding and the wanting to know Him from the faith and hope is what makes you have more faith and hope, because what makes you love Him, is because, He is in fact Love.

In my case I don’t know if what we feel is “love”, as if God is love, then what is love, and how do you feel it. An approach is the need to know what’s right, what is good, because I feel people seem to lose the hope that doing good is possible. I love God in a sense, because in doing what he tells me I am protecting the person. By loving the person you in a sense love God. God is a way, is the truth, you love the truth by knowing it, by the wisdom it gives, and you love Him by doing the truth, by actually living the truth. That’s why you act love, that’s the only way it can be done. This gives, hope, fortifies the faith and gives love. As God is divine, maybe, we can’t “know” Him, the way He is, because our humanity limits us in a way, but we can “feel” God, we can know Him in our own limiting way, when we do what’s right, when we do good (as God is good), not because of the satisfaction of our pleasures, but because our actions help and sacrifices for the person, for the sake of the person, like He sacrificed Himself, “undeservingly”, but because of His love (as He is love).

Love is limitless, only God is good, so to be good is limitless, to be good in this way, is to love. Could this be love virtue.

Humility lets you see God, as the point is not to feel you are better than others, but that others are loved by God the same way as you are, so you need to love them the same way.

Doing what’s right to someone feels good, could this be feeling God?

Protecting someone you love, can this be feeling God?

“The reward of humility and fear of the LORD is riches, honor and life.” Proverbs 22, 4

“Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show his works by a good life in the humility that comes from wisdom.” James 3, 13

So what Iam saying is, isn’t the way to learn to love God is following what He wants us to follow. To act the way He acts.

“So be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma.” Ephesians 5 1-2

“So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Mathew 5, 48

“18 Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth. 19By this we shall know that we are of the truth, and reassure our hearts before him 20whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God; 22and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. 23And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. 24All who keep his commandments abide in him, and he in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit which he has given us.”1 John 3, 18-24

An interesting prayer is the Peace Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. “

For me His love in a sense becomes proof of His existence, of the truth, His ways, prove where love can get to. Love is the way that humans should act among humans, but the love God is referring to is the one like Jesus (Himself) lived by, and the way saints live by, because they understand that the standard is God, so they cannot lower it in any way.

The saints understand there is nowhere to go but to God, so that they and all can live. (And so that they can show God)
 
I feel we love God by loving the persons around us. Meditation is great to get in touch with the abstract, but if you want an experience with the five senses love God on the physical plane by loving and serving those in need. Love unconditionally…
 
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