Life-changing

On our retreat last week one of the questions for reflection was: "When have you had an experience of coming to know Jesus in a different way?  What effect did it have on you?"  For me it was discovering unearned love in a book I read in the early 1970's by James Burtchell named Philemon's Problem.  I am sure that I had heard of God's gracious love in Catholic school and in seminary and had probably even preached on it during the ten years that I had by then been a priest.  But it had never sunk in until I read this book.  One paragraph got to my heart (forgive all the male references:)
"Unlike ourselves, the Father loves men, not for what he finds in them, but for what lies within himself.  It is not because men are good that he loves them, nor only good men that he loves.  It is because he is so unutterably good  that he loves all men, good and evil. He loves sinners, He loves the loveless, the unloving, the (for unaided us) unlovable.  He does not  detect what is congenial, appealing, attractive, and respond to it with his favor.  Indeed, he does not respond at all.  The Father is a source.  He does not react; he initiates love.  His is motiveless love, radiating forth eternally.  And because it is creative, it originates good rather than rewarding it  Augustine had this divine priority in mind in his aphorism, 'In loving me, you made me lovable.'"
That passage changed my spiritual life from effortful to effortless.  From then on I felt like I was floating through life.  Forty-five years later I am still unpacking all that it means to have a God who loves us not matter what.