Even God cannot make us love him. "Forced love" is a meaningless impossibility, like "virtuous sin".

Our attempts at charity without God, our attempts at charity before faith and hope, all fail because they are based on ourselves and our own false sufficiency and our own righteousness as their foundation and cause. But the charity that comes after faith is God's own work in and through us, and is part of our own salvation.

It's out of liberal-hearted love and compassion for people that the Church has always been so hardheadedly conservative about doctrine.

All the way to Heaven is Heaven", said Saint Catherine of Siena. We

Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men.

Do you know what hurts so very much? It's love. Love is the strongest force in the world, and when it is blocked that means pain. There are two things we can do when this happens. We can kill that love so that it stops hurting. But then of course part of us dies, too. Or we can ask God to open up another route for that love to travel.

Love is the strongest force in the world.

Whenever we cannot love in the old, human way, God can give us the perfect way.

What the mind don't 'member, the heart still know. Love, the strongest thang of all. Stronger than all the rest.

Holding a worn Bible, he read from Paul's letter to the Corinthians about the true nature of love - what it is, and what it is not. It is not boastful, not proud, not self-seeking, not easily angered. It does not hold a grudge. It is patient and kind. It protects, trusts, hopes, perseveres, and never fails, even when we turn away from it. Love believes, and believes, and believes, even when it has been disappointed, and wounded, and thwarted by the weaknesses of the human soul.

What the mind don't 'member, the heart still know. Love, the strongest thang of all.

Long before silver bells jingled, Christmas lights twinkled, and horse-drawn sleighs went dashing through the snow, God reached down from heaven with the best gift of all. Love, wrapped in swaddling clothes. Hope, nestled in a manger.