Many believe that love is a warm feeling we experience when we care about someone deeply. However, Christ taught us that love is an action we take. It is what we do for others, unconditionally, in spite of what we "feel." Love is a giving act, a giving of ourselves and a giving up of our egos, our pride, and our self-centeredness. Genuine love is always offered in humility. Christ's kind of love is for everyone, regardless of whether we are worthy of that love or not. Christ gives His love freely. We just need to receive it and love Him in return of our own free will.
Excerpt from Chapter 13: Love and Charity
Loving others is not as simple as it sounds. Perfect love is called charity because it involves a sacrifice, a giving of oneself. It is a decision we make of our own free will. God showed His love for us by allowing His Son to be sacrificed for our redemption. We sacrifice ourselves, our selfish needs and desires in order to give love. Because charity is unconditional and expects nothing in return, we even sacrifice our need to be loved in return. We love simply because we are filled with God’s love and choose to express His love for us by loving others. Christ declared that “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). When we deny ourselves, we are able to love perfectly. This sacrifice can also involve suffering, as it did with Christ. Notice, He told us to take up our crosses. Denying ourselves creates a conflict within us because we are giving up or sacrificing our selfish desires or self-centeredness. This is why our conscience troubles us. It is the conflict between what we want and freely expressing perfect love. When it comes down to it, what we want often prevents us from being filled with God’s love.
For example, if we truly have perfect love in our hearts, we would not be able to gossip about others because gossip is hurtful. We would also be aware that we were disobeying God and therefore rejecting His will. In this case, our desire to gossip prevents us from loving perfectly. If we have God’s divine love in our hearts, we are truly a new creature. If we have reached this level of our journey, we may experience guilt or frustration when our desire conflicts with our love for God. Some of the sins we may have committed in the past may not have involved a conflict because we may have justified our actions. We allowed ourselves to be deceived by excuses. Maybe, we told ourselves everybody does that. However, when God’s perfect love has entered our hearts, our conscience prevents us from feeling comfortable about sin. Suddenly, we will experience great conflict in that decision. This is God’s love working in our hearts.