Book conferences: “Beloved Lover”

Here is an early Christmas present for everyone: a book summary on God’s divine love changing each person who accepts it.

During Fall 2024, I led four monthly talks with the Friendship Group on the book Beloved Lover by Fr. Greg Cleveland, OMV. If you’re looking for a biblical exegesis on the Song of Songs, this isn’t the book for you. But Fr. Greg uses this biblical book on human love as a springboard to examine the priest’s call to be the bridegroom to the Church.

However, the priest must be remembered that God loved him first. In spousal spirituality, everyone is a bride pursued and won over by Jesus, the Divine Bridegroom.

“Jesus fulfills his role as bridegroom by giving his life in sacrifice for his bride” (p. 3).

That encounter if welcomed transforms, heals and unites the human person to Jesus in his divine life and his mission to spread his love.

“We must find him first within through contemplative prayer” (p. 23).

Even a lay person can reap much treasures from the book, such as prayer, Ignatian discernment, leadership in ministry, the Mass, accompaniment and suffering.

There was so much material that I had to spread the presentation across four meetings. Here are the videos of the talks with links to the PowerPoint presentations below each one.