[gtranslate] God’s Love is Enough - Eglise Catholique Saint James (Saint Jacques)

God’s Love is Enough

God’s Love is Enough

We prayed the Suscipe prayer attributed to St. Ignatius of Loyola together after each Holy Mass in our seminary. This prayer after Holy Communion was our way of offering ourselves to Jesus who had just offered Himself to us at Mass. I always marveled at the last words of this powerful prayer:

Your love and your grace are wealth enough for me. Give me this, Lord Jesus, and I will ask for nothing more.

Were these mere words on our lips? Can God’s grace and love truly be wealth enough for us that we are ready to lose all other things? Is it possible to offer all to God—our freedom, memory, understanding, will, and all that we have and cherish—and settle for His love and grace alone?

The Baptism of Jesus shows us that indeed God’s love and grace are all we need in this life and that we can lose all things for the sake of having that love and grace within us. His love will surely provide all for us just as His grace will surely guide and sustain us.

Two things happened when Jesus was baptized. Firstly, the heavens were opened and the Spirit descended on Him in the form of a dove, further anointing Him with the grace of God. Secondly, the Father affirmed Jesus as His truly beloved son with the words, “You are my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Lk 3:21-22). Here Jesus powerfully experienced a visible overflow of God’s love and grace.

This love and grace were enough for Jesus to fulfill His earthly mission, doing good to others, delivering all from the bondage of Satan, and journeying to His ultimate sacrifice on Calvary. St. Paul attested to the power of divine love and grace in the life of Jesus after His baptism: “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power and He went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him” (Acts 10:38).

We too will find that God’s love and grace are enough for us if we do the following things:

Begin to live as God’s beloved children.

Jesus lived as the Father’s beloved Son, completely dependent on the Father for everything, as John writes, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing on His own accord, but only what He sees the Father doing; for whatever He does, that the Son does likewise” (Jn 5:19). He received baptism in complete obedience and dependence on His Father.

We live as God’s beloved children when we are firm in faith, joyful in hope, and active in charity. We do not live worldly lives because Jesus “gave Himself for us to deliver us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for Himself a people as his own, eager to do what is good” (Tit 2:14). We experience the sufficiency of divine grace and truth only when we begin to live as God’s children.

We make constant effort to please God by doing His will.

The Father praised Jesus as His Son even before Jesus had preached a single sermon or worked a miracle. He had not even begun His public mission. He simply received baptism from St. John the Baptist.

In the same way, we see how sufficient God’s love and grace are when we sincerely make effort to please God no matter the results that we achieve. God does not look at the results we attain or how grand our actions are. He considers the love and intention behind our actions above all things. He affirms and pours out His graces on us when He sees this sincere effort to please Him by doing His will.

We humbly accept all that God is offering to us.

Jesus humbly accepted baptism from John even though He did not need it. He forever possesses the fullness of divinity: “For in Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col 2:9). Yet He humbly accepted to stand in line with sinners to receive the baptism as if He had also sinned.

We, too, open ourselves to receive the divine grace and love when we humbly accept all that God is offering us for our mission in life. We accept the fullness of His word even if it moves us out of our comfort zone. We do not pick and choose the teachings of the Church that we can accept or reject. We accept the seven sacraments instituted by Jesus Christ without questioning our need for any of them, especially the sacrament of reconciliation.  

We seek to grow in our relationship with God.

We are told that Jesus was praying shortly after He was baptized. He prayed as a beloved Son to His loving Father. He devoted large amounts of time in prayer during His earthly ministry to show how He put His relationship with the Father above His success in ministry. In this way, He taught us how fervent prayer disposes us to receive the love and grace of the Father.

We ought to grow in our relationship with God by praying like Jesus. How can we experience the affirmation and love of the Father and His grace when we are not serious in our prayer life? We should pray for the sake of deeper relationship with God and not just to get favorable results.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, it is so easy for us to think that we need so many things in this life for our fidelity to the mission that God has entrusted to us in baptism. If we have everything but lack the love and grace of God, there is no way that we can fulfill our mission for a single day.

This love and grace are offered to us in each Eucharist. Let us live as God’s children, offering ourselves to the Father in union with Jesus at each Holy Mass. Then we shall know that His love and grace are indeed enough for us.

Glory to Jesus!!! Honor to Mary!!!


Photo by Cherry Laithang on Unsplash

Seeking the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary through prayer