• Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect (Mt. 5:48).
• For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life (Mt. 7:14).
• This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you (Jn 15:9, 12).
• Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. ****And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (Eph. 5:1-2).
• And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony (Col. 3:14).
• But whoever keeps his word, in him truly love for God is perfected. By this we may be sure that we are in him: he who says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked (1 Jn. 1:5-6).
• He who loves his brother abides in the light (1 Jn. 1:10).
• By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren (1 Jn. 3:16).
• If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us (1 Jn. 4:12).

From The Catechism of the Catholic Church

• Charity is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God (#1822).
  • love God not for our own sake, but for His.
• The way of perfection passes by the way of the Cross (#2015).

From St. John of the Cross

• “The state of perfection” is “union with God through love” when the soul “has now passed through severe trials and conflicts by means of the spiritual exercise that leads one along the constricted way to eternal life. The soul must ordinarily walk this path to reach that sublime and joyous union with God” (The Dark Night, Prologue).
• “This dark night [of the senses] signifies here purgative contemplation, which passively causes in the soul this negation of self and of all things” (DN, 1.1).
• “The way of perfection requires denying one’s own will and satisfaction for God” (DN, 1.7).
• “A reform of the appetites is the requirement for entering the happy night of the senses” (DN, 1.8).