"Man needs this loving look. He needs to know that he is loved, loved eternally and chosen from eternity. At the same time, this eternal love of divine election accompanies man during life as Christ's look of love. And perhaps most powerfully at the moment of trial, humiliation, persecution, defeat, when our humanity is as it were blotted out in the eyes of other people, insulted and trampled upon. At that moment the awareness that the Father has always loved us in his Son, that Christ always loves each of us, becomes a solid support for our whole human existence. When everything would make us doubt ourselves and the meaning of our life, then this look of Christ, the awareness of the love that in him has shown itself more powerful than any evil and destruction, this awareness enables us to survive.
"My wish for you then is that you may experience what the young man in the Gospel experienced: 'Jesus, looking upon him, loved him.'" -- Bl. John Paul II ("Dilecti Amici" #7)
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