Someone may be uncongenial to me, but if I remember the words of Saint John of the Cross: ‘Put love where there is none, and you will reap love’, my love will go out to meet him in the attempt to provoke response. But still, I am not able by my love alone to produce or create the goodness or beauty of any thing; not even a mother, by her act of loving, can change the heart of her son who is a sinner. It is otherwise with God’s love [for us], which is prior to the being and goodness of things… God first willed the world—willing and loving are the same with him—and the world budded forth and grew, as the outcome of his act of love. The world exists because God loved it; it continues because God continues to love it. There is, therefore, an inversion to make when we go from man’s love to God’s: man’s love follows upon the goodness of things, God’s is creative of the goodness of things.
Charles Cardinal Journet (1891–1975)