I enjoy the GEICO “It’s what you do” commercials (which I manage to see in the less than one hour of television I watch each day). They remind me of a sort of syllogism I’ve used to explain why Gods loves us: God loves us because God is love. When love is what you are, love is what you do. Therefore, God loves.
Why does God love us? Because God is love and that is what love does: it loves.
God does not love us because we are good or because we deserve it; He loves because He is love.
Enjoy this “It’s what you do” commercial. It illustrates the old maxim agere sequitur esse (action follows being). In other words, what one does follows from what one is.
I feel this reasoning is circular, though a consolation for those who feel unworthy of God’s Love. Circular because the reasoning goes “God loves us because He is Love, God is Love because He loves us.”
I think God loves us, ultimately, not because He is Love or Mercy or Justice or Holiness or other Attributes of His Nature, but because of Who He is.
Who He is being His Essence, which no creature can or will ever fathom. Yet we cannot comprehend how Jesus converts the bread and wine into Himself, or why He sustains their accidents, yet the Miracle of Miracles and Mystery of Faith is still less of a mystery than Who God is: so we must be humble.
Whether or not Jesus as Man was allowed to fathom His Divine Essence I don’t know, but I do know He loves us.
“I think God loves us, ultimately, not because He is Love or Mercy or Justice or Holiness or other Attributes of His Nature, but because of Who He is.”
I heard it said once that ‘God is what He has.’ What we think of as separate attributes are all one, unified.
I may be wrong or just be missing your point, but my understanding is God can’t really be pulled apart or dissected in this way.
I think that’s what Msgr. was saying (which I missed). Also, you’re right- God’s Essence, Nature, or Substance is One.