Choose a topic from Part 1:
1. Where there is will there is love, for love is the fundamental act of will. Since God is will, God is love.
2. God loves all existing things, that is, things that have positive being. For these things exist by God's will, that is, by his love. To love a thing is to will the thing and to will good to it. God wills the existence, essence, and perfections of existing things; hence he loves these things. God's love is not like human love which is attracted to things by the good it finds in them; God's love causes the good in things.
3. God loves some things more than others inasmuch as he confers more perfection on some things than on others. A plant has more perfection than a lifeless body; an animal has more perfection than a plant; a human being has more perfection than an animal. In each case, greater perfection means greater love of God for that reality.
4. God wills or loves the better things more than others inasmuch as these better things have more good from the divine will.
"Lord, here burn, here cut, and dry up in me all that hinders me from going to You, that You may spare me in eternity."
St Louis Bertrand
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"Shun too great a desire for knowledge, for in it there is much fretting and delusion. Intellectuals like to appear learned and to be called wise. Yet there are many things the knowledge of which does little or no good to the soul, and he who concerns himself about other things than those which lead to salvation is very unwise.
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Thomas á Kempis
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"A single act of uniformity with the divine will suffices to make a saint."
St Alphonsus de Liguori
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