"We love Him because He first loved us."
Perfect charity loves God for His own sake independently of any thought of ourselves. However, perfect charity is preceded and accompanied by a charity that has at least an indirect reference to ourselves. The love of God first springs up within our hearts because of the love that He has shown to us. We think of all that He has done for us, and we recognize therein a clear proof of His love. Love begets love, and we cannot help being drawn towards One who has thus gratuitously manifested towards us a charity to which we owe all that is really precious in our lives and all the good gifts that we possess. How then can we fail to be attracted towards Him who has shown such love to us?
This love of gratitude is not the same as the love of concupiscence and not the same as the pure love of friendship. It most resembles the latter and always enters into it.
Without some sort of gratitude, friendship would be mere admiration; the personal element necessary to love would be wanting. When a Saint dwells with rapture on the Divine perfections, there is always present to his mind a remembrance of all that God has done for him. Do I, with gratitude, ever recount to myself all that God has done for me?
This element of charity is present in the charity of the saints in Heaven. Their song will not only be, "We give Thee thanks because Thou has taken to Thyself great glory and has reigned," but also "because Thou hast redeemed us to God in Thine own Blood." The song I must seek to sing in my heart here on earth says, "Thanks to God, first for His great glory and then for His goodness and love to me."
- text from Charity, Meditations for a Month by Father Richard Frederick Clarke, SJ