Often, we talk so much about our lives and the lives of our neighbors—what we should do to fill our lives with God’s grace and peace and happiness, what we must do to make our neighbor’s life happy—that we forget the basic reason why you and I and all men live. We live and breathe and have our being for one reason only: to love God. God created us for this one reason, to love him. He gave us power over all things of the earth for one reason only, that we may love him. He gave us our lips to be voices for the stars and the sun and the birds and the animals and the trees and rocks and mountains, and the exotic orchids and the simple dandelions, so that they can sing their hymn of praise to their God through you and me: “God, we love you!” The world would echo with this cry: “God, we love you!” It should be the song of every man, the whisper of every child: “God, we love you!” There is no reason for living, no sense to life, no reason why our heart should beat, or our lungs should breathe, or our minds should act, without this love. We have been made “God-lovers,” and our lives are restless, empty, barren things unless they be filled in every part with the song of songs, “God, we love you.”
—Excerpted from With God in America by Walter J. Ciszek, SJ
