God’s Love Language
Knowing how you best love and receive love, can help you to not only have a better relationship with other people, but with God Himself.
There are five main love languages. - Quality Time, Words of Affirmation, Physical Touch, Gift Giving, and Acts of Service.
Everyone expresses and receives love in different ways. Knowing your loved ones love languages and your own personal ones, helps you to better express your love for people in the way that they can best receive it; and it helps you to receive their love in the way that is best suited for you.
Many arguments and disagreements tend to occur due to someone feeling unloved, when in actuality it’s simply because the other person is loving them in a way contrary to the way that they best receive love. Therefore, knowing your loved ones, and your own love languages helps you to have better, and healthier relationships.
Have you ever thought that God has a love language? Or perhaps the fact that He has all five?
God loves to spend quality time with us. He asks us to come to Him, seek Him above all things; and spend precious time in quiet union with Him. He has written His Word, to be impressed upon our hearts, and He became The Word Incarnate, to save us from our sins. The words of The Bible are God’s love letters to mankind. You can find His sweet touch, in the tiny fingers of a baby, who is made in His image and likeness. His gift to you, is the greatest gift of all, for He gives Himself to you, to be your nourishment in The Eucharist. He longs to be your daily bread, sustaining you, and giving you life. His acts of service, are those answered prayers that make your life a little bit easier. “God please spare the traffic today, please don’t let it rain.” Think of how you smile, when God answers the seemingly mundane. God loves us with all the five main love languages, which is why His love is the greatest of all.
Now think of what your love languages are. Knowing how you best love and receive love, can help you to not only have a better relationship with other people, but with God Himself. It is beneficial to apply your love languages in regard to your relationship with God.
For example, my love languages are words of affirmation and gift-giving. Spiritual reading for me is highly important. I like to find books that contain words from Christ, so I can read His words. One of my favorite books is “He and I” by Gabrielle Bossis.
Gabrielle was a Third Order Franciscan, and a mystically inclined woman, who would receive locutions (interior or audible words) from Jesus. The book “He and I” is like a diary recording of the beautiful words Christ spoke to her.
Here’s a word from Christ in the book, that I love a lot. -
“If you have eyes to see, every hour of the day holds its splendor. It comes from Me, from a fragment of Me. For you, of course - so that you may learn the lure of praise, the joy of adoration, the love of love. And I vary my spectacles every morning to rejuvenate your hearts. Have you anyone else so ingenious in His ways of pleasing you? You have someone to carve the clouds into the shapes you love, haven’t you? And an engineer to swell the tide so that the water reaches the wall of your terrace? What tradesman places the birds in your trees and so many butterflies around your flowers? Whose hand plucks the yellow leaves of your linden trees with such grace, while your strawberry plants offer you their long rest for the fruit of future years? Open your eyes wide and look at love. It is I who is passing by.” - Jesus to Gabrielle Bossis, taken from the book “He and I”
Since my love language is words, reading Christ’s beautiful, poetic words, pierces my heart and compels me to love Him all the more. I know that I will fall more in love with Jesus, upon hearing His soul stirring words, so I try to make it a priority to do spiritual reading often.
Regarding my other love language being gift giving, I love the total gift of self that Christ gives us Catholics in The Eucharist; and I think of His true presence as an ultimate and wonderful gift. It’s a gift to know that Christ is always there waiting for us, in The Blessed Sacrament. When I think of the fact that God loves us to the point of becoming our nourishment, and how The Eucharist makes perfect sense when considering the vastness and depth that is the love of God; it enkindles my heart into loving and serving Him all the more.
I encourage you to discover your own love languages and begin to apply them, to your relations with God. Knowing how you best give and receive love, will make it easier to love and serve God; and allow you to better receive the love that He has for you.
Serviam.
January 5th is The Feast Day of Saint John Neumann.
“Everyone who breathes high and low, educated and ignorant, young and old, man and woman, has a mission, has a work. God sees every one of us. He creates every soul, for a purpose.”
- Saint John Neumann