In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me.

I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and the grace to make this time of prayer fruitful.

My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my Father, and Lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

We read in the first letter of St. John, In this is the love, not that we have loved God, but that he has first loved us and sent his son

as propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God has so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

In this passage of St. John, we see that love, the love of God, is the primary

source of love, and that our love is only a response. And it's a great response, but it's

a response to somebody who knows us and loves us, created us,

and will save us.

St. John continues and says, no one has ever seen God.

If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.

St. John implies that love is what makes God visible in this world.

And so when we have a relationship with love with God

and we respond and correspond to God's love

by actually loving our neighbor and serving our neighbor and giving glory to God.

We are doing what St. José Maria said often that love is with love repaid.

And in this meditation, I want to focus on this very idea that love is with

love repaid and delve into it more deeply. What does it mean that the only way we can

pay back love is with love? Well, actually, if you look at the first reading of the Second Sunday of Lent,

we read in Genesis,

The Lord said to Abraham, or to Abraham, I'm sorry,

...