The Love of God - How Much He Really Loves Us.

By Paul Baylis, Editor Marian Times.

If somebody says to you "God loves you!", what would be your gut reaction? Might it be something like "Sure, that's real nice". If you're anything like me, it might be. We know conceptually that it's true that God loves us, but often we cannot make the connection to the heart. We don't grasp HOW MUCH God loves us or WHAT IT MEANS to be loved by God!

Here's something to ponder:

The story of the first passover is fascinating.

And this day shall become a memorial for you, and you shall observe it as a festival for the Lord, for your generations, as an eternal decree shall you observe it. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, but on the first day you shall remove the leaven from your homes ... you shall guard the unleavened bread, because on this very day I will take you out of the land of Egypt; you shall observe this day for your generations as an eternal decree. - Exodus 12:14-17

God commanded His people to slaughter a lamb and spread the blood around the doors of their homes, so that when the angel of death went around the streets slaughtering the first-born sons, he would see the blood of the lamb around the door and literally "pass over" that house and onto the next. Thus, the first-born sons of God's faithful were spared by the blood of a sacrificial lamb.

It also happens that Jesus Christ was killed on this very same feast of the Passover. Jesus Christ was the first-born and only begotten Son of God himself. How much God loves His own first-born son! Yet, He loves us apparently even more as from all appearances He allowed his own first-born to be slaughtered, just as the lamb in the original Passover, so that we might take the salvific blood of this Lamb of God and spread it around the door posts of our hearts and so be saved.

God provided the lamb that should be slaughtered, whose body and blood we take at Mass each Sunday. By receiving Holy Communion, we symbolically spread Christ's blood on our door posts. God's first-born was sacrificed as a lamb, so that we might live!

THIS IS HOW MUCH GOD LOVES US!

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