Continuing from yesterday.  

St. John of the Cross has three chapters in his Spiritual Canticle in which he writes about God’s look of love.  It is God looking at us in love that makes us lovable and beautiful.  “With God, to gaze at is to love.” (SC 31.5)  And it is in His looking at us, loving us unconditionally, that we, in turn, become beautiful. 

By infusing his grace in the soul, God makes it worthy and capable of his love.  (SC 32.5)

He does not love things because of what they are in themselves.  With God, to love the soul is to put her somehow in himself and to make her his equal. (SC 32.6)

St. John says that God’s gaze of love produces four things in our souls: “it cleanses, endows with grace, enriches, and illumines.” (SC 33.1)   And as God gazes on us–as we let ourselves be gazed upon–we become beautiful, and then that beauty draws His gaze even more towards us, and the more He gazes upon us, the more beautiful we become, and so on and so on.  “When God beholds the soul made attractive through grace, he is impelled to grant her more grace.” (SC 33.7)

Who can express how much God exalts the soul that pleases him? [And remember we please Him best when we let Him look at us with His love.]  Who can express how much God exalts the soul that pleases him?  It is impossible to do so, nor can this even be imagined, for after all, he does this as God, to show who he is. (SC 33.8) [emphasis added]

God is Love.  For Him to be is to love.  So the more we let Him, give Him permission, turn our souls toward Him, the more we are letting Him be God, so to speak.

Fr. Conrad de Meester says God has no needs, but if He did, it would be to love . . .    So let Him love you . . .