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Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus says the measure that you use will be measured out to you. He is speaking about the loop of grace.

God’s love can truly dwell in us only in the measure that we give it away. If we try to cling to it, it will never work its way into our own hearts. But if we give it away as an act of love, then we get more of it, entering into a delightful stream of grace. If you give away the divine love, then you keep it.

Love is described in the Christian tradition as a theological virtue, a habit or capacity that comes as a gift from God. This is true because love is a participation in the divine life. God is uniquely capable of love in the complete sense, since he alone can fully will the good of the other as other.

What makes real love possible among humans is only a sharing in the love with which God loves, some participation in the divine to-be. When we root ourselves in the God who has no need, who exists in radical self-sufficiency, we can begin to love the other as he does.