Tuesday, August 18 : Saint Francis de Sales

As God created man to his own image and likeness (Gn 1:26), so did he appoint for man a love after the image and resemblance of the love which is due to his own divinity. He said: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart; this is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Why do we love God? “The cause for which we love God,” says S. Bernard, “is God Himself;” as though he had said: we love God because he is the most sovereign and infinite goodness. And why do we love ourselves in charity? Surely because we are the image and likeness of God; and whereas all men are endowed with the same dignity, we love them also as ourselves, that is, as being holy and living images of the divinity. For it is on that account… that he makes no difficulty about calling himself our father and us his children; it is on that account that we are capable of being united to his divine essence by the fruition of his sovereign goodness and felicity; it is on that account that we receive his grace, that our spirits are associated to his most Holy Spirit and made, after a fashion, a participant of his divine nature (2P 1:4)… And therefore the same charity which produces the acts of the love of God produces at the same time those of the love of our neighbour. And even as Jacob saw that one same ladder which touched heaven and earth serving the angels both for descending and ascending (Gn 28:12), so we know that one same charity extends itself to both the love of God and our neighbor.
Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team