God’s infinite love for you

Do you know how much you are loved? Really, truly, deeply loved? Not the way we love a good book, our favorite meal, or a great vacation. Not even the way that we love a parent, spouse, or our children. Can you imagine a love deeper than that?

God’s love surpasses anything that we have experienced on earth. The love that God has for us is impossible to comprehend and put into words, but Msgr. Stuart Swetland, host of Go Ask Your FatherTM on Relevant Radio®, gave it his best shot.

“Do you know how much you are loved? If we’re honest, our answer to that question has to be, no. Because we can only scratch the surface of just how much God loves us. He loves us with an indescribable love—a love that is beyond all telling. A love that we can only speak about in metaphor and poetry and art, but thanks be to God we can try to speak about it in metaphor, poetry, and art, because we are trying to describe something that is infinite, in finite language with finite terms,” said Msgr. Swetland.

“God holds us in existence—if for a moment God quit loving any one of us, we would cease to exist. The very fact of our being, the very fact that we and everything in the cosmos is, is because of God’s love, which is an ongoing, re-creative reality.”

Monsignor pointed out a tweet from the Holy Father, in which he speaks about the Gospel of Luke 11:1-13 where Jesus teaches his apostles the Our Father.

Monsignor reflected on the Gospel, pointing to it as a way that Jesus taught us how much love the Father has for each of us. “The disciples of Jesus were men of prayer, every one of them. When they asked Jesus, teach us to pray, they already knew how to pray on one level—they had the beautiful and wonderful structure of prayer that had developed … in the time of the Hebrew Scriptures, the time of the old covenant,” said Msgr. Swetland. “So it wasn’t a structure they needed to learn … what did they see in Jesus and his prayer that caused them to want to be taught by him?”

“They saw in Jesus’ prayer that there was … an intimacy, an authenticity, a closeness that they longed to have themselves. And that is exactly what Jesus taught them—when you pray, say ‘Abba, Our Father.’ … You, if you are baptized, you are God’s child. You are a son or daughter in the Son. Jesus is our big brother; we are part of the family of God. And as such, we have an indescribable intimacy with God.”

He who does not love does not know God; for God is love. – 1 John 4:8 

Listen to the full reflection:

Go Ask Your Father airs weekdays at 1pm ET / 10am PT only on Relevant Radio.

Lindsey is a wife, mother, and contributing author at Relevant Radio. She holds a degree in Journalism and Advertising from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Lindsey enjoys writing, baking, and liturgical living with her young family.