How God Speaks Our Love Language: A Guide to Growing Closer to Him

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By Sarah Mendus

To be Catholic is to experience the greatest love story ever written. God is endlessly pursuing us, loving us with reckless passion in every moment, every breath. The great quest of our lives is to learn to receive this beautiful love, to train our eyes and orient our hearts to see God moving in the world around us, and to love him back with everything we have. In the words of St. Therese of Lisieux, “Oh Jesus, my love, at last I have found my calling: my call is love.”

How do we live out that call? What can we practically do here on earth to grow more in love with God?

It is easy to fall into traps of abstraction when trying to answer this question. Even if we truly believe that God loves us, it is easy to think that there are limits to God’s love, that because we can’t see him here on Earth, he can only love from a distance.

This is not the case. God is here, within us, all around us. As we know from Acts 17:27-28, “He is not far from any one of us. For ‘in him we live and move and have our being.’” He loves us as intimately as if he were standing next to us.

Every experience of authentically giving and receiving love here on earth — the love between brother and sister, parent and child, between spouses — is a small, though imperfect, revelation of how God loves and pursues us.

So, the ways we give and receive love here on Earth can help us start to understand what God’s love for us looks like. One tool frequently used to discuss love in our relationships is the five love languages, a concept detailing the five dominant ways people tend to give and receive love developed by marriage counselor Dr. Gary Chapman: gift giving, acts of service, quality time, words of affirmation and physical touch. They frame love as an action rather than a feeling or abstract idea, naming ways to choose to love others intentionally. Looking through the lens of these tools can help us see how God loves us in concrete, identifiable ways and how we can intentionally show him our love in return. 

Gift Giving

This is perhaps one of the easiest to see in our relationship with God. He is a master of this love language. Every blessing is a gift from God, a tangible result of his love for us. The people we love, a breathtaking view, a beautiful sunset, a warm home, a favorite song — even something as simple as a good sandwich — are all gifts given by God.

But it’s easy to miss these gifts. So, practicing gratitude is an important discipline so that we can see God’s love for us through this love language. By intentionally seeking out and naming the blessings in our lives, we can’t help but see how God uses gifts to lavish us with his love.

On our end, we can give God small gifts by embracing appropriate sacrifices. We can take on small fasts that we can offer up for God and his people, like skipping dessert or waking up a few minutes early to pray. As Therese of Lisieux puts it, "Love proves itself by deeds, so how am I to show my love? Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers, and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love."

In short, God can use every little sacrifice and gift we give him, and each one brings him delight.

Acts of Service

This was one of the most prominent of God’s love languages during Jesus’s ministry here on earth, and it still is today. We can see God doing acts of service for us every time he heals our wounds, helps us through times of despair and hardship and provides that thing we’ve been praying for. He sees our needs and provides for them.

We can learn to better recognize God’s love through this love language by cultivating our memory, reflecting on prayers that have been answered in the past and noticing how God has come through for us.

One way we can respond to him through this love language is to serve God by serving his people. We are called to be his hands and feet, and we can serve God by caring for his children here on Earth through the Corporal Acts of Mercy, like feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, and being a friend to someone who needs it. We can even do small things with great love, like opening the door for someone. As Jesus said in Matthew 25:40, “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.” Nothing goes unnoticed to God.

Quality Time

Spending intentional time with your loved one is another one of God’s favorites. In every moment of our lives, he is available to us in a supernatural way, longing to sit with us in every breath. This is beautifully described in the poetry of Psalm 139:7-10: “Where can I go from your spirit? From your presence, where can I flee? If I ascend to the heavens, you are there; if I lie down in Sheol, there you are. If I take the wings of dawn and dwell beyond the sea, even there your hand guides me, your right hand holds me fast.” In moments of prayer, praise, sadness or despair, he is there for us, yearning for us to turn and see him.

We can love him through this love language by simply turning to meet his gaze. Prayer, especially in Eucharistic Adoration, is a simple way to do just that and spend time with him like we would with a close friend, talking with him, sharing our lives and asking him about who he is and what he thinks. The important thing is to remember that when we pray, we are not trying to reach a God who sits far off in a dimension we cannot reach. When you talk to Jesus, he is kneeling in the pew with you, holding your hands in his, closer than the air you breathe.

Words of Affirmation

God uses every opportunity to express his love in words — to tell us he loves us, all the things he loves about us, and how much he adores us and holds us close. If you can’t hear God saying these things, ask him in prayer. He longs to tell you. His words of love are all around us and come to us from all sorts of places — from the wisdom of the saints, the words of those around us, and from Scripture, to name only three. For a powerful example of his love for us, read through the Song of Songs, a story of a man pursuing his beloved, which theologians say describes how God loves and pursues his bride, the Church.

We can love God through this love language by simply returning these words of affirmation. We can tell God what we love about him, what we are thankful for, and what we love about this world. As it is written in Psalm 97:12, “Rejoice in the Lord, you just, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness.” We can do so in big moments of praise and adoration, as well as in quiet moments of prayer and journaling. Even talking about him with others can show our love for him.

Physical Touch

This love language is perhaps the least intuitive on this side of the Paschal Mystery. How can God love us physically without a physical body here on Earth?

The answer? Through the sacraments. Paragraph 1374 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us, “In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist, ‘the Body and Blood, together with the Soul and Divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained.’” He is there, truly. When we receive the Eucharist, we are receiving the Lord himself.

One of the best ways we can love him back through physical touch is by faithfully receiving him in the sacraments. God’s greatest desire is that we simply receive him and open ourselves to him. Receive the Eucharist and seek him out, believing that every time you receive him, you are receiving the entirety of God himself — Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.

God Loves You

These are just starting points for you to begin exploring how God loves you. God’s love is not limited to these five love languages. The way he loves you is extremely intentional and personal. He pursues every individual on earth with a love that is particular, a relationship that is unique to them, unique to you.

Spend some time this Lent reflecting on your relationship with God, on ways that you see him loving you every moment, and on ways you can choose to love him more fully. Give yourself to him. Allow yourself to fall in love with the one who loves you so dearly. He can’t wait for you to see just how much he loves you.