Wherever you are on your journey of prayer, we are happy you are here. If adoration still feels new to you, this is a gentle place to begin. The Act of Love is a simple, heartfelt prayer that helps us tell Jesus we want to love Him more, even when our hearts feel cold or divided. Like St. Peter, we don’t have to love perfectly to begin—we only have to ask, and trust that God’s grace will do the rest.
Reflection:
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Loving Christ fully is the deepest desire He places in our hearts. When you pray an act of love to our good and merciful Savior, you are telling Jesus you want the grace to love Him better—to give your own “fiat,” your yes to Him. This is surrendering our will to love Christ more fully and completely, without reserve—giving Him our lives, handing over all our weaknesses and our unholy attachments and asking for the grace to become more like Him. When we give Him consent, Jesus can transform us into His own image and through sanctifying grace we will become a temple suitable for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
We look to St. Peter the Apostle, and through his life, to see how we can overcome our weaknesses and give our “fiat” to God.
Many hear Christ’s message and don’t accept it. They just walk away, unwilling to give Him their lives.
An Act of Love toward God is the Greatest Commandment
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them [a scholar of the law] tested him by asking, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment.
Matthew 22:34-38
The Act of Love to My Good and Merciful Savior also reflects on our inability to love God without asking for the grace to love Him more. As you pray this prayer, really open your heart to love Jesus. You may even want to place your hand on your heart as you pray.
God is love, and He is the one that gives us the ability to love. We see this beautifully in John 21, where St. Peter admits he can’t love Jesus enough.
Peter’s Love for Christ Would Grow
After Peter denied even knowing Jesus three times, and hid away in fear during Christ’s Passion, he carried a deep shame and a painful sense that his love had failed. Jesus, knowing this wound, and knowing how deeply Peter’s love for Him would still grow, sought Peter out to heal it and reconcile with him at the end of the Gospel of John.
In the Greek text of John 21, two different words are translated into the single English word “love.” Each carries its own particular meaning. This passage uses two of them: agape, a total, self-giving love, and philia, the love of friendship or brotherly affection. Twice, Jesus asks Peter if he loves Him with agape. Twice, Peter—humbled by his own failure—can only answer with philia, admitting that his love, for now, only reaches so far. The third time, Jesus meets Peter where he is and asks only for philia. It distresses Peter to hear the question a third time, echoing his three denials, but Jesus is not condemning him. He is healing him, one gentle question at a time.
Then Jesus tells him what that love will one day become:
“Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.”
He said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. And when he had said this, he said to him, “Follow me.”
John 21:18-19
Like Peter, none of us can love Jesus so completely that we are willing to “stretch out our hands” and give our whole lives for love of Him—not on our own strength. Only His grace can bring us that far. And it’s worth pausing here: this is the first recorded private conversation Jesus has with Peter after the denial. Before Peter could go on to shepherd the Church, Jesus first went looking for him, gently, to restore what shame had broken.
The Act of Love to My Good and Merciful Savior also reflects on our inability to love God without asking for the grace to love Him more. As you pray this prayer, really open your heart to love Jesus. You may even want to place your hand on your heart as you pray.
Act of Love to My
Good and Merciful Savior
O good and merciful Savior,
It is the desire of my heart to return Your love for love. My greatest sorrow is that You are not loved by all men, and, in particular, that my heart is so cold, so selfish, so ungrateful. Deeply sensible of my own weakness and poverty, I trust that Your own grace will enable me to offer You an act of pure love.
And I wish to offer You this act of love in reparation for the coldness and neglect that are shown to You in the sacrament of Your love by Your creatures.
O Jesus, my sovereign good, I love You, not for the sake of the reward which You have promised to those who love You, but purely for Yourself.
I love You above all things that can be loved, above all pleasures, and also above myself and all that is not You, protesting in the presence of heaven and earth that I will live and die purely and simply in Your holy love, and that by loving You I must endure persecution and suffering, I am perfectly satisfied, and I will ever say with St. Paul: “Nothing shall separate me from the love of Christ.”
O Jesus, Supreme Master of all hearts, I love You, I adore You, I praise You, I thank You, because I am now all Your own.
Rule over me, and transform my soul into the likeness of Yourself, so that it may bless and glorify You forever in the abode of the saints.
Amen.
You may not yet feel your love for God is enough, and you may feel you lack what is needed to serve Him and do His will. Remember how He tenderly cared for Peter and have faith that He will give you the grace you need to grow your love for Him. If you pray for agape love, God in His mercy will grant it to you. If you would like to sit with this moment a little longer, here is a short prayerful YouTube reflection on it.
Pray the Prayer to St. Peter the Apostle for his intercession.