The Faces Of Love

It sparks like lightning
It spreads like the plague
It burns like the fire, inside the fire, inside the fire
It radiates like the inside of the first moment of the cosmos. Inspired by Song of Songs 8: 6

What does the love of God do to a person? It kills their desires. It purifies their heart. It protects them. It banishes vices. It incurs rewards. It lengthens life. It cleanses the soul.

The four redemptions of the soul: fear and repentance, love and hope. Two of them protect it on earth, the other two waft it to heaven. Fear shuts out the sins that lie ahead. Repentance wipes out the sins which come before. Love of the Creator and hope of the Creator’s kingdom: that is what wafts it to heaven. Any person, then, who will fear and love, and who will fulfil God’s desire and commandment, will have respect in the sight of people in this world, and will be blessed with God in the next.
Colman mac Beognae The Alphabet of Devotion

Whoever loves allows themselves willingly to be corrected.
Whoever loves suffers blows willingly for their formation
Whoever loves is willingly cast out in order to be wholly free.
Whoever loves is willing to be alone in order
to love Love and to possess her.
Hadewijch of Brabant

You keep us loving
You, the God whose name is love
Want us to be like you –
To love the loveless and the unlovely and the unlovable
To love without jealousy or design or threat
And, most difficult of all,
To love ourselves.
Evening Liturgy Iona Community

Thrice holy God
Come as the morning dew
Hold up in us your love
Which draws all lesser loves to you