We are obliged to serve God because He created us
1 min • Digitized on February 17, 2022
From The Sinner’s Guide, page 26
By Venerable Louis of Granada
CHAPTER II.
THE SECOND MOTIVE WHICH OBLIGES US TO PRACTISE VIRTUE AND TO SERVE GOD: THE BENEFIT OF OUR CREATION.
We are obliged to practise virtue and keep God’s commandments not only because of what God is in Himself, but because of what He is to us, because of His innumerable benefits to us.
The first of these benefits is our creation, which obliges man to give himself wholly to the service of his Creator, for in justice he stands indebted to Him for all he has received; and since he has received his body with all its senses, and his soul with all its faculties, he is obliged to employ them in the service of his Creator, or incur the guilt of theft and ingratitude towards his gracious Benefactor.
For if a man build a house, who should have the use and profit of it, if not he who built it? To whom does the fruit of a vine belong, if not to him who has planted it? Whom should children serve, if not the father who gave them being?
Hence the law gives a father almost unlimited power over his children, so natural does it seem that he should be master of an existence of which he is the author. What, then, should be the authority of God, the sovereign Author of all being in heaven and on earth?