ACC ~ John 16 v27

LOVE FROM LOVE

AUGUSTINE: “For the Father himself,” he says, “loves you because you have loved me.” Is it the case, then, that he loves because we love or, rather, that we love because he loves? Let this same Evangelist give us the answer out of his own epistle: “We love him,” he says, “because he first loved us.” [1] This, then, was the efficient cause of our loving, that we were loved. And certainly to love God is the gift of God. He is the one who gave us the grace to love him, who loved while still unloved. Even when we displeased him, we were loved so that there might be that in us whereby we should become pleasing in his sight. For we could not love the Son unless we also loved the Father. The Father loves us because we love the Son, seeing it is of the Father and Son we have received the power to love both the Father and the Son: for love is shed abroad in our hearts by the Spirit of both, [2] by which Spirit we love both the Father and the Son and whom we love along with the Father and the Son. It was God, therefore, who created this religious love of ours whereby we worship God, and he saw that it is good, and for this reason he himself loved what he had made. But he would not have created in us something he could love if it were not for the fact that he loved us before he brought about that something. TRACTATES ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 102.5. [3]

[1] 1 Jn 4:19.

[2] See Rom 5:5.

[3] NPNF 1 7:391**.

GOD AS OUR DEBTOR

CHRYSOSTOM: When we ask God for something, there is no need for intermediaries. And he is no more disposed to help us because he is asked by others than if we ourselves ask. For he wants us to seek things from him often. This pleases him very much. For it is in this alone that he becomes our debtor: Every time we pray to him, he is pleased and freely gives us what we have not loaned him. And should he see someone who is in need fervently praying to him, he will himself pay down for us what he has not received from us. But if we pray in an indifferent manner, he will be indifferent to our request—not because he does not want to give but because our prayer is acceptable only when we pray to him with all our hearts.

Nor does God put off the granting of our prayers because he detests them or because he is against us. But he does clearly wish, by delaying his giving, to keep us close to himself; just as fathers who love their children tenderly will withhold a gift from children who are lazy and indifferent in order to teach them to persevere. And have your prayers been heard? Then give thanks because your prayers have been heard. And have your prayers not been heard? Keep praying so that they may be heard. … For, though you may be helpless and without a protector, if you cry out to God himself you shall most certainly be heard. POEM ON PRAYER, HOMILY 2. [1]

[1] PG 63:580-81.