On the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of our Lord Jesus Christ, we Christians celebrate the enormity of the love of our Savior for us.  Indeed, it was the Son of God's love for us that drove him, as it were, to undertake the hard labor of our redemption.  The ninth century archbishop and monk Rabanus Maurus wrote a short and moving meditation on the Passion of The Lord in which he marvels at the length, width, height, and depth of the Lord's love for us:

"Attend and see how great the love, how stupendous the love of God, so that he wished to be made man for the sake of man, and in order to exalt men, he who is the Most High humbled himself.  And even as man abhors and flees shame, suffering, and sorrow, so God chose these and clung to them, laying aside joy, and bearing the Cross, shame, and mockery.  See, then, and consider how deep the depths of his love . . . See how great the heights, how glorious the majesty from which he came, and how humble and vile the lowliness to which he came.  From the height of heaven to the lowest parts of the earth, from a throne of glory to a place of misery, from the delights of the angels to the troubles of men, from the bosom of the Father to the womb of a poor little Mother!"