When I was growing up before the Second Vatican Council, Catholics were seen as a group of guilt-ridden hypocrites. The first thing Jesus told His listeners to do when He began to preach was to keep turning to love God throughout their daily lives, despite the temptations that kept drawing their attention elsewhere. The more often a person performed such acts of love, the more it would open them to receive God’s love in return. The human virtue of trying to love God can only be formed by continually trying to love Him. Here we will receive what St. Thomas Aquinas calls the fruits of contemplation to which I have already referred.