Most of us were taught that we have to love God first; then having loved God, we must then love other people. And really, that was as far as most of us ever went. Perhaps there was a vague mention of loving ourselves because Jesus says that – that you have to love your neighbour as yourself. So we were taught a little bit that we have to love ourselves, but that love of self was usually put last, and also it was usually expressed in negative terms. Fr John reversed that order. He said the first step is to love ourselves. The second step is to love others. And only then can we really enter into the mystery of loving God, or even know what it means to love God. This changing of the order of the stages of our growth in love is of great importance to our own understanding of meditation. It makes us understand why meditation, which is so simple, can be so difficult, why it is such a challenge
(Aspects of Love 2 by Laurence Freeman OSB )
