Act of Love
O my God, I love You above all things, with my whole heart and soul, because You are all good and worthy of all my love. I love my neighbor as myself for the love of You. I forgive all who have injured me, and ask pardon of all whom I have injured. Amen.
Where Does This Prayer Come From?
You'll also see it called the Act of Charity.
Same prayer.
"Charity" is the older word for this kind of love.
The version on this page is nearly word for word the one in the Baltimore Catechism of 1885, the book generations of American Catholics grew up on.
But the words go back much further.
Someone asked Jesus which commandment is the greatest.
Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind.
— Matthew 22:37
Then the second:
"Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."
— Matthew 22:39
Those are the first two lines of this prayer.
Now open the Catechism.
Charity is the virtue "by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God" (CCC 1822).
Wait a second.
"Above all things."
"Our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God."
The Act of Love is the Church's definition of charity, prayed in the first person.
Then the prayer goes one step further.
I forgive.
I ask pardon.
Both directions.
Jesus tied them together:
"forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors."
— Matthew 6:12
He even said to leave your gift at the altar and go make peace first.
— Matthew 5:23–24
And St. Paul puts this virtue at the top of the list.
And now there remain faith, hope, and charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity.
— 1 Corinthians 13:13
Why the greatest?
A few lines earlier, he says:
"Charity never falleth away."
— 1 Corinthians 13:8
Everything else in this life passes.
This doesn't.
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