What does it feel like to really love God?

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A_Really_Big_Cat

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I hear my friends talk about how they love God so much and they just love the calmness of prayer and the presence of God; I feel bad because when I go to mass or pray I feel like it’s just an obligation that I need to do for God. I find myself getting sleepy or my mind starts to wander and I don’t really know what it’s like to really focus on God. When I get really sad or have a panic attack I feel an overwhelming love for God but I wish I could feel that focused on God everyday.
 
Maybe you can start by being grateful that God became man and gave us a way of salvation. Prayer and meditation can help the focus part.
 
Pure love for God is devoid of joy and happiness so feelings are not necessary.
 
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There are two equally wrong things about loving God that I keep on seeing online which, happily, I can never find in good Catholic books. One is that loving God is all about feeling good; this one I actually find less in Catholic forums. This is the error of sentimentality. The other is that love of God is devoid of joy. This one is more common in Catholic circles, as one can note above. This is the error of voluntarism. Both are lethal for anybody’s spiritual health, but especially voluntarism, for it is actually the capital, often mortal, sin of sloth.
Wherefore any sin which by its very nature is contrary to charity (the virtue of loving God) is a mortal sin by reason of its genus. And such is sloth, because the proper effect of charity is joy in God…while sloth is sorrow about spiritual good in as much as it is a Divine good. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (hereupon abbreviated as ST), Second Part of the Second Part (II-II), Question 35, Article 3.
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…thus those who find no joy in spiritual pleasures, have recourse to pleasures of the body… ST, II-II, Q 35, A4.
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The truth about what you feel in loving God is, as most truths in Catholic teaching, a mixture of both. St Thomas Aquinas’ teaches that there are actually two kinds of joy in loving God. Let us, however, discuss what joy is first. St Thomas Aquinas quotes St Augustine in that “desire and joy are nothing else but a volition of consent to the things we wish.” (ST, I-II, Q. 31, A 4; St. Augustine, City of God, Book 15, Chapter 6). Joy therefore is something that you will, something voluntary, in that you choose to enjoy the thing you have wished for. Let us say for example you receive a gift for your birthday and you find it is something you have been wishing for, but it was given to you by someone you had a fight with. You can choose to enjoy the gift no matter what, or you can refuse to enjoy it just to spite the giver. The former choice is what is properly called joy.

I will discuss the two types of joy in loving God next post, which will be tomorrow since I am very tired now.

(next post is here)
 
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Don’t worship because you want something from God-- worship God because He deserves it. God would be worth worshiping even if there was no afterlife. Absorb yourself in studying the Bible and and you will grow an appreciation for the Gospel. The Gospel is a spiritual orgasm and it has been available for thousands of years. You just have to reach out and take it. The nectar of eternal life is offered to you; you would be a fool to reject it.

Ask the Lord to give you an appetite for the Gospel.
 
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Oh boy I couldn’t imagine a love of God devoid of Joy and the emotions associated with it. Loving God can be as emotional and joyful as loving your child or spouse but more so. However loving God can be as dutiful as disciplining your child but even more so like a warrior vowed to his code of conduct and there is joy in this too.

As for mass if you’d like to spice up your relationship with the Lord there I recommend reading The Lambs Supper by Scott Hahn. God bless.
 
Loving God feels like being in a long-term relationship with anybody else.

There are times of consolation where you feel strong and positive, or really good, and you feel like God is definitely there for you and you’re a team.

There are times of desolation where you feel disconnected from God, or just feel bad about stuff, and God doesn’t seem to be really helping.

There are a lot of ordinary times where you’re sleepy at Mass or have a lot of work to do and God is just sort of there in the background but you’re not feeling much one way or the other.

The important thing is you have a relationship with God through all of these ups and downs. It’s like being married to somebody for 20 or 30 years. Or like having a parent for decades.

Having a relationship with God is not all about the “feels”. It’s not like you’re guaranteed to be joyful every day with God. But you can have some stable level of happiness knowing that God is at least there. Some saints who were plagued by doubt didn’t even have that much, while others were able to grow in happiness and serenity as their love for God grew, but even they had a few ups and downs. It’s not like they came from every encounter with God dancing for joy and in fact some of them went through very long periods of desolation.

The important thing is to just stick with God no matter how you are feeling on any given day.
 
St. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote an booklet - “On Loving God”, in which he describes four degrees of love. He describes the four, one at a time; the First Degree (click the link) and then each of the others following in order (click on the page on the “NEXT” button, upper RHS).

In summary:
  1. St. Bernard calls the “first stage” of love, that which has no love for God, but only for the self. “It’s all about me” is the Mission Statement of such a person. He loves ice cream, he loves apple pie, he loves people who are good to him and help him. A very young child is a typical example of this - but people can remain in this self-love for their entire lives.
  2. Bernard calls the “second stage,” that stage when the person described above, discovers God, a God who can do really really good things for him! God is discovered as this man’s greatest benefactor, the best “good” that he has ever found. This is the way he loves God. Actually, his “Mission Statement” continues, only now God is at the top of the “good for me” list. This stage aligns with what St. Thomas Aquinas refers to as the first stage of Holy Charity - a love for God is present, but self-interest can be strong still.
  3. In Bernard’s third stage ( aligns with Aquinas’ second stage), the man discovers that this God is good and wonderful in Himself, beyond the good that He can do for us humans. The person begins to love God as God, and not merely as the great benefactor of the self. BUT, traces of self-interested love, mercenary love, continue but diminished. “This God who is good and beautiful in Himself! - still is good for ME too!!”
  4. In Bernard’s fourth stage (aligns with Aquinas’ third stage), the great and infinite goodness and glory of God are seen, overwhelming fear and concern for self. The person begins to love others, and even himself, only in God. God is all.
 
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(Continued from this post)

Now we can properly go to discussing the two kinds of joy of loving God, which is discussed in ST II-II, Q 26, A 2. The more imperfect joy of loving is the one that is most familiar to Catholics: it is to love God through our actions, through participating in the Divine good.
The other is the joy of charity whereby we rejoice in the Divine good as participated by us. This participation can be hindered by anything contrary to it, wherefore, in this respect, the joy of charity is compatible with an admixture of sorrow, in so far as a man grieves for that which hinders the participation of the Divine good, either in us or in our neighbor, whom we love as ourselves.
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The reason why this joy has an admixture of sorrow is because we act to love God, and unfortunately we are not perfect, but sinners. We and our actions will always fall short. Not only that, but we also see the shortcomings and sufferings of our brothers and sisters who we love too for the sake of God’s love. Many will see that this is the reason some Catholics deem the act of loving God as joyless: it is not too far to speculate that the pain and sorrow of this kind of love can overpower the joy, and indeed it can happen. But I am not saying this kind of love is bad nor unimportant; indeed we cannot avoid this kind of sorrowful love and joy, as we shall see later.

Now if there is an imperfect joy of loving God, then there is a more perfect one, and it is to rejoice in the goodness of God. In this kind of love we consider only God in His perfections and do not inject ourselves nor others in it, so there is no sorrow in it.
One, the more excellent, is proper to charity; and with this joy we rejoice in the Divine good considered in itself. This joy of charity is incompatible with an admixture of sorrow, even as the good which is its object is incompatible with any admixture of: hence the Apostle says (Philippians 4:4): “Rejoice in the Lord always.”
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continued next post
 
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So what is this more excellent joy of loving God like? To answer, it is best to understand that the virtue of the love of God is actually friendship with God (ST, II-II, Q. 23, A.1). Now think of the events in your life when you see a loved one being happy. If you love the person so much, wouldn’t you rejoice with them? Or how about you receive the news that, even though your loved one is not with you, that something happened to the loved one that made them happy; wouldn’t you again rejoice too?

The more excellent joy of loving God then is to rejoice that God, our Friend, is happy. And since God is always happy, then it will never fail to give us joy. “Rejoice in the Lord always”.

It may not be obvious (I know it wasn’t to me at first), but every model of good prayer always has this rejoicing in God’s happiness. As St Thomas said, glory is the same as blessedness which is the same as beatitude which is the same as happiness.
Gregory says: “He is in glory, Who whilst He rejoices in Himself, needs not further praise.” To be in glory, however, is the same as to be blessed. (ST, I, Q 26, A 1).
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This is adoration, or the “A” of the ACTS of prayer. Even Jesus gave us His prayer with the first words of it as “Our Father, who art in Heaven”, i.e. Our Father who is in Heaven and is therefore happy. But it is in the Holy Mass where the rejoicing in God’s happiness is most apparent because we pray in the Gloria: “We praise You. We bless You. We adore you. We glorify You. We give You thanks for Your great glory.”

Now it is obvious that this kind of rejoicing actually solves the riddle of how to love God unselfishly yet joyously; that is, as a poster above put it, how to love God not because you want something from Him but because He deserves it, and yet always get something from it. It is the ultimate “having your cake and eat it too.” It is unselfish to rejoice for somebody you love, and yet you will always be joyful.

And I have to say it works. When I am sorrowful the thought “At least, my happy Friend, you are happy, right?” always picks up my day, no matter how slight that pick-me-up is.

And yet when people start trying this they will notice that there will be times it will be less effective than others. The reasons for this, and how to overcome them, will be discussed next post.
 
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Love does not depend on feelings, love is a choice. One chooses to love God and does it.
 
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