Love Part 3: Desire for Love

"I just want to love and be loved in return"
I so often find myself thinking this, and saying it. I just want to feel loved, and ultimately in the desire to receive love we also desire to give love. This week I have been feeling particulars lonely, so I started thinking about this and then it flooded over into my prayer as well.

I ended up pulling out the catechism as I continued to think on this. You see, this week I realized how it is a challenge for me to accept that people love me. It is a challenge for me to believe that I am capable of being loved. In doubting and questioning this love, I am doubting and questioning God's ability to love me. I told one of my friends this and she began to tell me how I am God's beloved, his little girl. Then Thursday night I was at an ever where we had talks from seminarians about being sons and daughters of God. Again, I was struck and it was clear God was trying to reveal to me how I am his beloved daughter. He was revealing to me how pride, how sin, how lies were beginning to put distance between me and him.
All week a part of the catechism has been coming to mind, so now I'm going to share it with you -

27 The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for:
The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion with God. This invitation to converse with God is addressed to man as soon as he comes into being. For if man exists it is because God has created him through love, and through love continues to hold him in existence. He cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and entrusts himself to his creator.

While looking for the section above I discovered this as well - 1 God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength.

So God, in his goodness created us to love and be loved. He created us for love, in love, through love. It is the ultimate source of our existence. We must hold onto this truth, and live it out - knowing and trusting in God's infinitely perfect plan, and knowing that he has destined for love. Of course we are going to have days, and even weeks when we feel lonely that is a challenge we are being given, a challenge to continue seeking the Lord even when it may be hard, even when we may not want to - know that it is how God made you - and know that it is The Lord who will satisfy that desire you have to love and be loved. We are Christ's beloved children, and we must hold onto this truth in all circumstances.