God's Infinite Love in Creation

The Catholic spiritual teaching on God's Love begins with an act of anthropological lucidity — looking at man in truth, small and finite before an infinite God: recognizing that our finite conception necessarily falls short of an infinite reality. This is the prerequisite for the whole doctrine. As long as one believes one sufficiently understands God's Love, one measures it by the scale of what men ordinarily call "love" — a feeling, an affection, a conditional attachment. But the Love spoken of in Christian revelation is of another order.

The central biblical affirmation

The New Testament does not merely say that God loves: it says that God is Love. It says what God is in Himself — and not what He would feel, after the manner of our human sentiments. Saint John writes it twice in the same epistle:

"We have come to know and to believe the love God has for us. God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him." — First Letter of Saint John, 4:16^[3]

The Greek formula (ho Theos agapē estin) places agapē not as one attribute among others, but as the very essence of God. The Catechism of the Catholic Church draws the consequences: "He is Himself eternally exchange of love: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and He has destined us to share in it"^[4]. Creation, redemption and sanctification are then the free overflow of this Trinitarian life of love: common work of the three Persons^[5], they manifest God without being confused with His intimate life — the Church distinguishes the mystery of God's intimate life (Theologia) and the whole of His works (Oikonomia)^[6] — and without making the world a part of God, who remains infinitely greater than all His works^[7].

The radical disproportion with our conception

Since God's Love is infinite, and every human conception is finite, our representation necessarily falls short of reality. The spiritual tradition affirms it unceasingly: whatever our idea of God's Love, it necessarily remains below reality.

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897), Doctor of the Church, formulates this idea in a letter to her sister Léonie, on 12 July 1896:

"I assure you that the good God is much better than you think." — Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Letter 191 (12 July 1896)^[8]

The apparent simplicity of the sentence conceals a precise theological thesis: whatever one thinks of God, the truth is even better. The mechanism is universal: as long as one has not seen God face to face, one imagines Him from human analogies (a loving father, a benevolent protector) that remain structurally insufficient.

Saint Angela of Foligno: "a grain of millet before the universe"

Saint Angela of Foligno (1248-1309), Franciscan tertiary and Italian mystic, left one of the most striking descriptions of this disproportion. In her Book of Visions and Instructions, she writes:

"I feel and affirm that all the words that have come from the mouths of men since the beginning of centuries, and that the words of Holy Scripture have not touched the marrow of divine goodness, and are not, before this goodness, what a grain of millet is before the size of the universe." — Saint Angela of Foligno, The Book of Visions and Instructions, ch. 53^[9]

The scope of the image is decisive: not only are our human words insufficient, but even those of Scripture itself — which are yet the best we have received — do not touch "the marrow of divine goodness". The distance is not pedagogical, it is ontological. Saint Angela returns to this point in another passage:

"I affirm with perfect knowledge that all that is preached about God's love is absolutely nothing: preachers are not capable of speaking of it, and do not even understand what they are saying." — Saint Angela of Foligno, The Book of Visions and Instructions, Seventeenth Step^[10]

The frankness of the statement is rare. For Saint Angela, who lived through very high mystical experiences, even the best preachers do not know what they are saying when they speak of God's Love, because that Love is of another order than anything they can formulate.

Saint Thomas Aquinas: "a straw beside what I have seen"

The most famous testimony in this line is that of Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), the common Doctor of the Church, author of the Summa Theologiae which contains thousands of pages of doctrine on God. On 6 December 1273, while celebrating the Mass of Saint Nicholas in Naples, Thomas received a vision that plunged him into silence. When his secretary Reginald of Piperno urged him to resume his work, he answered with this now canonical phrase:

"The end of my labours has come; all that I have written and taught seems to me like straw beside what I have seen and what has been revealed to me." — Saint Thomas Aquinas to his secretary Reginald of Piperno, December 1273^[11]

The testimony is reported by the early biographers (William of Tocco, Bernard Gui) and by the acts of the canonization process. Its scope is immense: if the greatest theologian in the history of the Western Church, after a life devoted to speaking of God, judges his works as "straw" before what God showed him, every human word about God is definitively put in its place.

The spiritual stake of these convergent testimonies is practical: it is about letting one's heart be enlarged. Saint Augustine had formulated it with an image, in a famous sermon: "If you understand, it is not God" (si comprehendis, non est Deus)^[12]. God lets Himself be loved, encountered, tasted; but He escapes any complete rational grasp. The logical consequence, for the spiritual life, is that one is always right to increase one's trust, because the reality of divine Love is always ahead of our hopes.

Once the disproportion between our conception and reality is acknowledged, the question is reversed: if God is infinite Love, why did He create? The answer of the Catholic tradition is precise and theologically important. Creation was for God neither an act of necessity, nor an act of justice, nor an act of utility. It was an act of pure Love, superabundant and gratuitous.

Neither necessity nor justice: the classic formulation of Father Jean d'Elbée

Father Jean of the Heart of Jesus d'Elbée (1892-1982), French priest and preacher of retreats for young people, left a classic of contemporary spirituality, Believing in Love. There he formulates the doctrine in lapidary terms:

"Creation is infinite Love overflowing from itself, so to speak. God created us out of love for Himself and out of love for creatures, in order to have someone to fill with His love and mercy. [...] He did not create us out of necessity: He had no need of us. He did not create us out of justice: He owed us nothing. No, it is to His pure love that we owe our existence." — Father Jean of the Heart of Jesus d'Elbée, Believing in Love (Croire à l'Amour), Téqui, 2007, p. 18-19^[13]

The sentence distinguishes three rejections, each important.

First rejection: creation is not an act of necessity. God, fully blessed in the Trinitarian communion, needed nothing. There is no lack in God that creation would come to fill. This is the constant doctrine of the Church, defined at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215): God is "one true God, eternal, immense and unchangeable, incomprehensible, almighty and ineffable, Father, Son and Holy Spirit", "Creator of all things, visible and invisible", who "by His almighty power created from nothing, from the very beginning of time, both orders of creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal"^[14]. The explicit formulation of the freedom of this act — God creating not to increase His blessedness but to manifest His perfection, "by an absolutely free design" — is that of the First Vatican Council^[15].

Second rejection: creation is not an act of justice. God owed us nothing. There were, before creation, no beings awaiting existence to whom God would be indebted. Creation comes from excess, not from debt.

Third rejection, implicit and decisive: creation is not an act of utility. God does not create us to use us, nor to fulfil a function. On the contrary, He creates "in order to have someone to fill". Man is not an instrument, he is a recipient. This is exactly what Gaudium et Spes would say in 1965: man is "the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake"^[16].

Creation as the overflow of intra-Trinitarian Love

Creation is therefore explained, in Catholic doctrine, by the free overflow of the Love that circulates eternally among the three divine Persons. This is the teaching of Saint Bonaventure (1221-1274), in a formula that has become classic: "Good is diffusive of itself" (bonum est diffusivum sui)^[17]. A perfect good does not enclose itself: it radiates. Saint Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologiae, takes up this doctrine and applies it to the creative decision: God wills other beings not because He would need them — His own goodness suffices for Him — but because it befits His goodness to communicate His good and to make creatures share in it^[18].

It is this same intuition that the mystical account of Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947), Servant of God and Dominican tertiary, reformulates, reporting the interior words she received on 24 January 1920:

"My daughter, if you knew how much I love the company of creatures! [...] Before creating man, I said to Myself words like these: 'I do not want to be alone. I want creatures to keep Me company, so that I may rejoice with them, so that they may share My Happiness. With them, I will give free rein to My Love.'" — Interior words reported by Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, vol. 12, 24 January 1920^[19]

The mystical formula takes up in the language of intimacy what scholastic theology said in its technical language: God creates in order to give free rein to His Love.

"All things come from you": the absolute priority of the gift

This doctrine has an essential corollary: everything we are and everything we have proceeds entirely from God's gift, without any prior merit on our part. King David already expressed it in the Old Testament, when offering the materials for the Temple:

"All things come from you, and it is from your hand that we have received what we give you." — First Book of Chronicles, 29:14^[20]

The verse is theologically vertiginous: even "what we give" to God initially comes from God. The prophet Haggai, post-exilic, confirmed it in his time: "The silver is mine, the gold is mine — oracle of the Lord of hosts"^[21]. The only true owner of all things is God Himself. Everything that is, from the light of the stars to our own breathing, is gratuitous, given, lent. It does not belong to us by right.

This absolute priority of the gift is what makes creation infinitely precious as a testimony of love. If God had no need to create, and yet did so for us, then our very existence is an act of love.

Biblical and magisterial teaching insists on a precise point: among all visible creatures, man holds a unique place. He is not the most evolved animal: he is, according to the Catechism, the summit of the creative work, endowed with an intrinsic dignity found in no other creature in the visible universe.

The biblical account: "in the image and likeness"

The account of human creation, in Genesis 1, marks a solemn break with what precedes it. For the other creatures, God simply says ("Let there be light", "Let the waters be gathered"). For man, the text introduces an interior deliberation of God:

"God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.' [...] So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." — Genesis, 1:26-27^[22]

The Hebrew verb bara' ("to create"), reserved in Genesis for properly divine acts, is used three times in a single verse concerning man — a unique threefold emphasis in the entire narrative. And the formula "in the image and likeness" (betsalmenu kidmutenu) places man in an ontological relationship of proximity to God Himself, possessed by no other visible creature.

The Catechism: "man is the summit of the Creator's work"

The Catechism of the Catholic Church takes up the teaching of Genesis and clarifies it:

"Man is the summit of the Creator's work. The inspired account expresses this by clearly distinguishing the creation of man from that of other creatures." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, §343^[23]

And elsewhere:

"Of all visible creatures only man is 'able to know and love his Creator'; he is 'the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake'; he alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God's own life." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, §356^[24]

"God created everything for man." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, §358^[25]

The teaching is precise. Man is neither an accident nor a derivative product of the cosmic process. He is the very reason for visible creation, and all other created realities are ordered to him. The Second Vatican Council, in the pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes, seals this affirmation in the most solemn way:

"Man, the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself." — Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, §24, §3 (1965)^[26]

Catholic doctrine therefore does not make man a happy accident in a blind nature; it makes him the intended recipient of all creation.

The place of the soul: "a little God and a little universe"

What scholastic theology formulated with rigour, mysticism unfolds in images. Luisa Piccarreta, in a passage dated 24 February 1919, reports these interior words:

"My daughter, you have as yet said nothing concerning the creation of man, he who is the masterpiece of Creation in whom the Eternal poured all His Love, Beauty and Craftsmanship, not drop by drop, but in rivers. In the excess of His Love, He placed Himself at the centre of man. [...] With His almighty Breath, He created him 'in His image and likeness,' endowing him with all His Qualities, adapted to creatures, making of him a little God. All that you see in Creation is absolutely nothing compared to man." — Interior words reported by Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, vol. 12, 24 February 1919^[27]

The same passage continues, evoking the proper beauty of the soul:

"If the creature knew how beautiful her soul is, how many divine qualities it possesses and how much it surpasses all created things in Beauty, Power and Light! One could say that her soul is a little God and a little universe. Oh! If she understood this, how much more would she esteem herself and not soil herself with sin, she who is so rare a Beauty, so representative a Prodigy of Creative Power!" — Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, vol. 12, 24 February 1919^[28]

The image — the soul as "little God and little universe" — echoes a known patristic motif. Saint Gregory of Nyssa, in the fourth century, already knew the idea of man as microcosm recapitulating creation within himself — while judging, in ch. 16 of On the Making of Man, that this praise still falls short of man's true greatness, which is to be in the image of the Creator^[29]. The doctrine is anthropologically strong: the human soul is not a fragment of the material world but a world in itself, capable of knowing and loving its Creator, and therefore of entering into a personal and eternal dialogue with Him.

The radical difference between "work" and "life" of Love

A second mystical passage clarifies what makes man unique among creatures:

"My daughter, in created things, the Divinity did not create Love, but the flowering of its Light, Power, Beauty, etc. So one can say that in creating the heavens, the stars, the sun, the wind, the sea and the earth, it was Our Works that We produced, and the flowerings of Our wondrous Qualities. It is only for man that there was this very great Prodigy of creating Life and the very Life of Our Love Itself. That is why it is said that he was created in Our Image and Likeness. And that is why We love him so much: because it is a Life and not a Work that came forth from Us, and Life has more value than anything." — Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, vol. 25, 25 December 1928^[30]

The distinction is precious. For inanimate things (the starry sky, the sea, light), God created works: flowerings of His power and beauty, which radiate a part of His qualities. For man, He created something else: not a work, but a life — the Life of His Love itself, communicated to the creature. This passage evokes Adam as God created him, clothed in the Divine Will (vol. 25, 25 December 1928): this received Life, lost through sin, is precisely what the gift of the Divine Will comes to restore. It is this communicated Life — and not a mere natural capacity for loving — that constitutes the whole dignity of the human person. In simple words: doing God's will means obeying Him with all one's heart — this is already the holiness of the saints; living in His Will means receiving His Will itself so that it may live and act in us, as it lived in Adam before the Fall.

God's Love for humanity taken as a whole is already dizzying. But the Catholic tradition insists: this Love is personal. It is not addressed to the species, but to each soul individually, and with an intensity that is not divided.

"Before I formed you, I knew you"

The prophet Jeremiah receives, at his call, a word that defines the entire biblical doctrine of election:

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I make of you a prophet for the nations." — Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, 1:5^[31]

The formula, first addressed to the prophet, is extended by tradition to every soul: God knows each person even before his or her biological conception. This knowledge is not a mere foreknowledge: it is a prior love. Saint Paul will write in the Letter to the Ephesians:

"Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! He has blessed us and filled us with the blessings of the Spirit, in heaven, in Christ. He chose us, in Christ, before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy, immaculate before Him, in love." — Letter to the Ephesians, 1:3-4^[32]

The expression "before the foundation of the world" (pro katabolēs kosmou) is decisive. Our election is not a divine decision taken at the moment of our birth; it is anchored in the very eternity of God, prior to the creation of time.

"I have loved you with an everlasting love"

God Himself formulates this eternal continuity, through the voice of the prophet Jeremiah:

"From afar, the Lord appeared to me: I love you with an everlasting love, therefore I keep My faithfulness to you." — Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, 31:3^[33]

Eternal love does not begin: it has always been. This is what Saint Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787), Doctor of the Church, places on the lips of Christ speaking to men:

"Children of men, recognize that it is I who loved you first. You were not yet in the world, the world itself did not exist, and already I loved you. Since I have been God, I love you; and I have loved you ever since I loved Myself." — Saint Alphonsus Liguori (words placed on the lips of Christ), The Practice of Love for Jesus Christ, Artège, 2020, ch. 1^[34]

The formula is theologically precise: if God is eternal, and if His love for us is without beginning or end, then each soul is loved with the same eternity as God Himself. The poet does not invent; he translates a metaphysical truth into an image.

Saint Catherine of Genoa: "if you knew how much I love souls"

Saint Catherine of Genoa (1447-1510), Italian mystic and author of the famous Treatise on Purgatory: according to Auguste Saudreau, who says he draws it from her Dialogue (Part II, ch. V), she reports this interior word:

"If you knew how much I love souls you could never know anything else in this life; for this knowledge would make you die; and if you lived, it would be by a miracle. My love is infinite and I can only love what I have created. The cause of my love is nothing other than itself." — Words reported by Saint Catherine of Genoa, cited in Auguste Saudreau, The Divine Words (Les Divines Paroles), éd. Saint-Jean, 2007, p. 33^[35]

Two affirmations follow one from the other. First, full knowledge of God's love would, in the present state, be unbearable for the human soul — it would make it "die" of love. The editor connects this saying with two precise mystical experiences: the transverberation of Saint Teresa of Avila — the angel with the golden dart piercing her heart, recounted by herself in chapter 29 of her Life — and that of Padre Pio, wounded in the side on 5 August 1918, a fact he relates to his director, Fr. Benedetto, in a letter of 22 August 1918 (Epistolario, vol. I). In both cases, it is a wound of love received in ecstasy, distinct from Catherine's hypothesis ("fully knowing"): the link between these experiences and her conclusion remains the editor's reading, not the very content of those accounts. Second, and more important for our purpose, "the cause of my love is nothing other than itself": God does not love because we are lovable, but because He is Love. His motive for loving is not outside Himself; it is His own nature.

Lucie Christine and Luisa Piccarreta: "There is only you and Me"

Several modern mystics have received, in very convergent forms, the expression of a love for each soul as intense as for all souls together.

Lucie Christine (1844-1908), French mystic whose Spiritual Journal, presented by Fr. Auguste Poulain, has been the object of no known official recognition by the Church, reports in her notes this interior word heard in September 1875:

"There is only you and Me. [...] For each soul in this world there is only Me and her, all other souls and all things are nothing for her except through Me and for Me!" — Lucie Christine, Spiritual Journal (Journal Spirituel), éd. Téqui, 1999, p. 40^[36]

The phrase crushes mathematical logic: for God, each soul is the unique object of His love, without diminishing His love for others. The same experience is found in Luisa Piccarreta, who reports:

"I love each soul, in the same capacity as I love all souls together!" — Luisa Piccarreta, The 24 Hours of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, 7th hour^[37]

This way of loving is strictly impossible for a finite creature, but it is possible for infinite Love: the infinite is not divided by the number of its recipients.

"I am your God, your Creator, your heavenly Father"

A word reported by Luisa Piccarreta, dated 26 March 1937, unfolds the motif of the divine impossibility of not loving what is His:

"It is almost impossible not to love what belongs to Us. That is why I love creatures so much. I preserve them, I give them Life because they are My Works. I created them, I brought them into the world, they are Mine. I am the beating of their heart, their breath, the Life of their life. I cannot but love them. [...] And in order to be loved by creatures, I say to them: I am their God, their Creator, their heavenly Father. I am entirely theirs." — Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, vol. 34, 26 March 1937^[38]

The logic is unassailable. God cannot not love us: His love for us is the direct expression of His being, and any failure would be an internal contradiction for Him.

The preceding argument naturally leads to the most important practical question: "All this is true for humanity in general, but is it true for me, despite all I have done?" This is the most frequent objection in the spiritual life, and the Catholic tradition answers it with constant firmness.

The diabolical temptation of doubt

Doubt concerning God's love is not neutral. It is, in classical spiritual doctrine, the Tempter's principal weapon. It is with this doubt that he approaches Eve at the beginning (Gen 3:1-5); it is with this doubt that he tempts Christ in the desert (Mt 4:3: "If you are the Son of God..."); it is with this doubt that he besieges every soul that seeks God.

The biblical answer is unequivocal:

"For you love all things that exist, and you feel disgust for nothing of what you have made; for you would not have made anything if you had hated it." — Book of Wisdom, 11:24^[39]

The reasoning is simple. If God "hated" you, or even if He were indifferent, He would not have taken the trouble to create you. Existence itself is proof of a prior love. As long as you exist, and as long as God keeps you in existence, it is by active love — not by cosmic inertia.

God looks at what you are, not at what you do

The doctrine of human dignity radically corrects moral self-evaluation. The sinner who deems himself unworthy of God's love reasons correctly — according to justice — but forgets another principle: God looks first at being before act. By creation, every human person possesses an inviolable dignity as image of God, which sin does not remove. Divine filiation in the proper sense — being son and daughter of God by adoption — is a gift of grace, received in faith and baptism (Jn 1:12; Rom 8:14-17; Gal 4:6-7). Baptism further imprints an indelible spiritual seal, the baptismal character, which even sin cannot erase, while sanctifying grace can be lost through grave sin and recovered through penance. Thus, even wounded and veiled by sin, the dignity of the soul remains — and God continues to love the sinner.

The classic image of the soiled banknote, popularized by many preachers, illustrates this simple doctrine: a banknote, whether crumpled, balled up or rolled in mud, retains the same face value. Its value does not depend on its apparent condition or the use made of it; it depends solely on the authority that issued it. So it is with the human soul: its value does not depend on its sins but on God who created it.

A word reported by the French mystic Marie Sevray goes in the same direction, on the dignity of the soul:

"There is nothing which, in My Eyes, is more precious than the human soul." — Word reported by Marie Sevray, Divine Appeals (Divins Appels), éd. Le Parvis, 2004, p. 11^[40]

If God Himself is "the beating of their heart, their breath, the Life of their life"^[41], then He has no reason to cease loving you, whatever your past. On the contrary, it is precisely because you are His beloved creature, called to adoptive filiation through grace, that He seeks you.

A living parable: the broken statue

A passage from Luisa Piccarreta uses a decisive image to grasp how God relates to the sinner. God is compared to a craftsman who made an exceptional statue, putting into it "His very life":

"We find Ourselves in the situation of a craftsman who made this magnificent statue which is the astonishment of Heaven and earth. The craftsman loves his statue so much that he put his very life into it. Thus, with each of its acts and movements, the craftsman feels within himself the life, the act, the movement of his beautiful statue. The craftsman loves it to delirium and cannot help contemplating it. But in all this love, the statue encounters something, collides and remains broken in its limbs and in the vital part that kept it joined and united to the craftsman. What will not be his sorrow? And what will he not do to restore his beautiful statue? All the more so, given that he still loves it and that to this delirious love has been added a suffering love." — Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, vol. 25, 25 December 1928^[42]

The image is anthropologically accurate. When the object of a great love is wounded, love does not diminish, it intensifies with a new dimension — suffering. This is what the pastor of Christ says: "What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost, until he finds it?" (Lk 15:4). God loves those who have gone astray no less; He loves them "with a suffering love," and He does everything to restore them.

It is this doctrine of faithful love that directly prepares the mystery of the Redemption, expounded in the following article.

God's Love for man manifests itself not only in the creation of the soul, but in all the nature that surrounds man. The Catholic tradition teaches that the whole of visible creation is a gift made to man, and more precisely a message of love that God addresses to each intelligent creature.

"God created everything for man"

The magisterial teaching is explicit. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches it in two closely related articles:

"Man is the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, §356^[43]

"God created everything for man." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, §358^[44]

The sequence is decisive. If man is the only creature willed for its own sake, and if everything else was created for man, then the whole universe — galaxies, lands, oceans, atmosphere, plants, animals, the very laws of physics — is, in the divine intention, a gift prepared for the human person.

Each creature, a particular facet of Love

This doctrine finds its most contemplative unfolding in mystical writings. Luisa Piccarreta reports a word dated 25 May 1923:

"Each created thing expresses a particular facet of Our Love." — Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, vol. 15, 25 May 1923^[45]

The sentence is concise and theologically rich. The sun is not merely a thermonuclear star: it is, in the intentional order, a facet of God's Love — its light, warmth, stability, gratuity. The flower is not merely a biological mechanism: it is a visual expression of the gratuitous beauty that God wishes to give us to see. Wind, rain, dew, sea, colours, flavours are so many particular words in a love letter that covers the whole universe.

This grid of reading radically transforms the relationship to nature. The believer no longer sees merely an external setting: he hears there a voice, that of the Creator saying "I love you" in a thousand forms.

The sun, the wind, the sea: so many "I love yous"

Several pages of Luisa Piccarreta unfold this spirituality of nature with striking precision. Here are three emblematic extracts.

"It is true, My daughter, that My Love for creatures has poured itself out in torrents in all created things. [...] When My Love created the sun, it placed oceans of Love in it. With each of its rays that floods the eyes, feet, hands, mouth, etc., of the creature, I offer her My eternal kiss overflowing with Love. Besides its light, the sun lavishes its warmth. Impatient to receive the love of creatures, I say to them through this warmth an intense 'I love you.' And when, with its light and warmth, the sun makes plants fruitful, it is My Love that goes about feeding man. The firmament spread above your heads continually reminds you of My Love. Each twinkling of the stars which, during the night, delights man's eye, says to him on My behalf: 'I love you.' Thus, each created thing manifests My Love to man. If it were not so, Creation would have no purpose. Which would be absurd since I never do anything without purpose. Everything was made for man." — Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, vol. 12, 9 January 1920^[46]

"I created the wind and Our love fills it with its effects so that the coolness, whirlwinds, whistling, moans, roarings of the wind may be repeated 'I love yous' that We say to the creature. In the coolness and whirlwinds, We breathe Our love upon her, and even in the moans and howlings of the wind We repeat Our unceasing love. The sea, the earth were created by Our Fiat, the fish, the plants they produce are effects of Our love which powerfully repeats in each thing that I love you." — Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, vol. 32, 16 April 1933^[47]

"Moreover, I created a great variety of things, some having this taste, others that. But all have a single sound: 'I love you.'" — Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, vol. 16, 18 February 1924^[48]

The word Fiat recurring in these pages is the word by which God creates — "Let it be": each creature exists because God spoke it. The teaching is coherent. Each dimension of sensible reality — visual, thermal, gustatory, sonorous, olfactory — is intentionally structured by God to speak His Love. The diversity of creation is not a naturalistic accident: it is the expressive richness of a Love that refuses to be confined to a single register.

A final image expresses its inexhaustible density:

"My daughter, My Love for creatures is great. Look at the light of the sun. If you could extract atoms from each one, you would hear My melodious Voice saying to you: 'I love you, I love you, I love you.' You could not count these 'I love yous.' You would be drowned in Love." — Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, vol. 11, 23 April 1912^[49]

The image is luminous in the literal sense, and its scope is spiritual: as the sunlight spreads in innumerable rays, divine Love spreads in innumerable "I love yous", each of which reaches the creature personally.

The preceding doctrine engenders, in the Catholic tradition, a concrete spirituality of nature. The believer is invited to "read" creation as a letter God addresses to him, and to respond to it with praise, thanksgiving and love in return.

"Heaven and earth tell me to love You": Saint Augustine

Saint Augustine, in the Confessions, expresses this spiritual posture in terms that have remained classic. In Book X, in his questioning of creatures (ch. 6), before rising towards memory, he cries out:

"I asked the earth, and it said, 'It is not I.' I asked the sea and the depths, [...] the heavens, the sun, the moon and the stars: 'We are not the God you seek!' they said to me. But they cried out with a loud voice: 'He made us.' My questioning was my attention; their answer, their beauty. [...] Heaven and earth and all that is in them, behold, from every side they tell me to love You, and they never cease to say it to all men, so that they are without excuse." — Saint Augustine, Confessions, Book X, ch. 6 (passages from n. 9 then n. 8)^[50]

The argument unfolds in two steps. First step: no creature is God; all proclaim Him as Creator. Second step: by their very beauty, they tell me to love Him. Creation is not merely a sign pointing to its Author; it is a call to love in return, and a call addressed personally to the soul that beholds it.

Saint Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi and the flower that wounds with love

Augustine's experience finds, in the mystical tradition, striking extensions. Saint Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi (1566-1607), Carmelite of Florence, received in contemplating a flower an experience of love so vivid that Saint Alphonsus Liguori preserved its trace:

When Saint Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi contemplated a flower, she was all inflamed with love for God and cried out: "Is it then out of love for me that God thought from all eternity of creating this flower!" This thought was for her like a dart of love piercing her heart. — Episode reported by Saint Alphonsus Liguori (Practice of Love for Jesus Christ, ch. 1, §4)^[51]

The thought is as simple as it is precise. If God has from all eternity thought of creating this exact flower, in this exact hue, at this exact moment when I hold it, then it is, here and now, a gift that God is giving to me. The relationship to nature changes: what seemed a universal décor becomes a letter addressed by name.

Saint Alphonsus: praising the created as an exercise of charity

Saint Alphonsus Liguori, in his treatise How to Converse Continually and Familiarly with God, gives this spirituality a practical form. To those who walk through nature, he explicitly teaches to transform every beauty into an occasion to love God:

“When you contemplate rich countryside, pleasant shores, flowers and fruits that charm you by their beauty or fragrance, say: ‘What beautiful things God has made for me, even here below! Should I not love Him? And what other delights does He have in store for me in paradise!’” — Saint Alphonsus Liguori, How to Converse Continually and Familiarly with God (Modo di conversare continuamente ed alla familiare con Dio), Traditions Monastiques, Flavigny-sur-Ozerain, 2018, p. 43-44^[52]

This exercise is anthropologically intelligent. Instead of letting beauty pass by without naming it (the purely aesthetic attitude) or clinging to it for its own sake (the idolatrous attitude), the believer learns to refer it to its author through an explicit act of love. Beauty then becomes a springboard towards God, and a simple walk through a flowering countryside becomes a spiritual act.

The practical stake: overcoming ingratitude

The spirituality of nature is not a contemplative refinement for a few chosen souls: it is the daily rectification of an ingratitude that threatens every man. The ordinary person receives each day dozens of small gifts (light, warmth, food, rest, beauty) without thanking their Author. The doctrine of Love in Creation provides the exact key for reading: all of this is God saying ‘I love you’ to each creature, and each day that passes without thanksgiving is an ‘I love you’ received without acknowledgement.

Saint Augustine had grasped the gravity of the problem: ‘they never cease to say it to all men, so that they are without excuse’. Creation is eloquent enough to make us accountable; our whole life should be a response to this love.

The Catholic doctrine of God’s Love in Creation can be summed up in a few precise propositions, verifiable in Scripture, the Catechism and the spiritual tradition:

1. God is Love in the strong sense of the verb to be (1 Jn 4:16). Love is not an attribute of God: it is His nature.
2. Creation is a free act of love, neither necessary, nor owed, nor useful (CCC §293-§295^[53]; Gaudium et Spes §24; Father Jean d’Elbée).
3. Man is the summit of visible creation, created “in the image and likeness” of God (Gen 1:26-27; CCC §343, §356-§358).
4. God’s Love for each person is personal and eternal, prior to biological conception (Jer 1:5; Eph 1:4; Jer 31:3; Saint Alphonsus).
5. This Love is not divided: each soul is loved as much as all souls together (Saint Catherine of Genoa, Luisa Piccarreta; see also the private testimony of Lucie Christine cited above).
6. Each creature is a particular ‘I love you’ that God addresses to man (doctrine unfolded by Luisa Piccarreta in the passages of the Book of Heaven cited above, and illustrated by Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi).
7. The right spiritual attitude is praise and love in return, through every beauty and every gift (Saint Augustine, Saint Alphonsus).

This doctrine is the first great proof of God’s Love for man. It prepares the second: the Redemption. If God already loved us so much in creating us, then the coming of the Word in the flesh, His Passion, His death on the cross and His Resurrection are not a ‘plan B’ after the Fall, but the deepening of a Love that does not allow itself to be overcome by sin. This is the subject of the next chapter of this spiritual teaching.

Go deeper with Via Divina — To go further and enter concretely into the spirituality of trust that flows from God’s infinite Love in creation, discover the free formation: open the Via Divina formation.

• The necessity of humility and the danger of pride — previous lesson, on the first abyss (knowledge of our nothingness).
• God’s Infinite Love in the Redemption — immediate sequel, on the mystery of the Incarnation and the Passion.
• God’s Infinite Love in the Eucharist — third proof: the Real Presence.
• God’s Infinite Love in the Sacred Heart and Divine Mercy — fourth proof.
• Knowledge of God’s Love, which produces trust — synthesis of the module.
• Knowledge of man’s nothingness — first abyss, indispensable complement.
• The double abyss: introduction — overview of the module.