The ego wants to love God first, and of course the ego is constantly trying to put itself first. But as we learn to move beyond that egocentricity that tries to make us love God before God loves us, or even perhaps trying to love God so that he will love us – all the complex ways in which the ego tries to manipulate and control even God or through its image of God – as we learn to recentre ourselves in the true centre of reality, the reality that God loves us first, then that experience of being loved, which is the whole meaning of redemption, impels a response in us.
( Aspects of Love 3 by Laurence Freeman OSB )
