Consider the eternal love which God had for you. Already before our Lord Jesus Christ, as man suffered for you on the Cross, his divine Majesty thought of you in his sovereign goodness and loved you infinitely. But when did he begin to love you? He began when he began to be God. When did he begin to be God? Never, for he has always been God, without beginning and without end. Also, he has loved you from all eternity. That is why he was preparing for you the graces and favours he has bestowed on you. He says it through the Prophet Jeremiah (31:3): I have loved you (he speaks to you as though there is no one else) with an everlasting love: therefore have I drawn you, taking pity on you. Hence, among other things he thought of leading you to make your deliberate decisions to serve him.
My God, what resolutions are these! God has thought of, meditated and planned them from all eternity! How dear and valuable they should be to us! How much must we be ready to suffer rather than turn aside from them by a hair’s breadth. No, definitely not, even if the whole world were to be destroyed. The whole world together is not worth one person. But a person is worth nothing without the deliberate decisions.