God is Love: It's Unconditional
God is Love, and His love is very different from human love. God's love is unconditional, and it's not based on feelings or emotions. He doesn't love us because we're lovable or because we make Him feel good; He loves us because He is love. He created us to have a loving relationship with Him, and He sacrificed His own Son (who also willingly died for us) to restore that relationship.
AllAboutGOD.com, 2016.
Our communication with God can be expressed in a variety of ways. We communicate with God using words and songs, in imagination and silence, and ritually or spontaneously. We can pray in church, our gardens, our cars, or while in the shower. We can also pray lying in bed, as the first thing we do when we awake, and as the last thing we do as we drift off to sleep. One of the characteristics of prayer we as Catholics believe is that with the right intention every moment of the day—all our hopes, works, joys, and sufferings—can become our prayer.
Catholics pray in different ways. The Catechism names three major expressions of prayer: vocal prayer, meditation, and contemplative prayer.
Loyola Press, 2016.
Think about the 7 different ways Jesus showed love during His earthly ministry:
#1) Jesus Healed The Sick in Love
“When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick” (Matthew 14:14).
#2) Jesus Raised The Dead in Love
“Jesus wept…once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance” (John 11:35, 38).
#3) Jesus Fed The Hungry in Love
“Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat. I do not want to send them away hungry, or they may collapse on the way.” (Matthew 15:32).
#4) Jesus Preached The Kingdom in Love
“When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things” (Mark 6:34).
#5) Jesus Cast Out Demons in Love
“When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick” (Matthew 8:16).
#6) Jesus Interceded For His Disciples And The Church in Love
“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you” (John 17:20-21).
#7) Jesus Gave His Life For The World in Love
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Telling Ministries LLC, 2016.
Or: Loving as God Loves
The two terms "love" and "charity" are frequently used interchangeably, and with good reason, since the virtue of charity is in fact a kind of love. However, the two are not identical; not all forms of love are also charity.
What sort of love is charity, then? Quite simply, charity is the Love of God, in which we are able to participate. Charity is a mode of participating in God's action, the highest mode, for with Charity we share in God's act of love; we are able to love the way God loves.
Catholic News Agency, n.d.
It grows increasingly true that the obligations of justice and love are fulfilled only if each person, contributing to the common good, according to one's own abilities and the needs of others, also promotes and assists the public and private institutions dedicated to bettering the conditions of human life.
Gaudium et Spes, 1965, #30
The principle of the common good, to which every aspect of social life must be related if it is to attain its fullest meaning, stems from the dignity, unity and equality of all people. According to its primary and broadly accepted sense, the common good indicates "the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily".
Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church par. 164
Ways our society can show the Common Good:
Australian Catholic Bishop's Conference, 2016.