According to Catholicism, are we deserving or worthy of God's love in any way?
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God, in his simplicity, has various perfections.
We know that God possesses various perfections, goodness, wisdom, love, etc.; and not only in the sense that He can create them, but that He Himself, really has them (they really exist in Him), and, they are in Him in the most eminent way (God is infinite). God does not only possess goodness, wisdom, love, etc., but He is Goodness, Wisdom, Love, etc.
However, God is simple (not in the sense that it is easy to understand Him, but in the sense that He is not composed of parts; there is no distinction between His essence and existence). Yet, these various and really distinct perfections (in created order) are not synonymous in God (hence we can not say that God pardons by His justice). In God, these perfections really converge in the most eminent way to one all-encompassing idea of Deity which is God Himself.
Creation is a sharing of the treasure of perfections found in God.
God manifests His infinite plentitude of perfections, His Glory, trough an act of creation. Since no created being can be absolutely simple and capture all that God has in his infinite perfection, God creates many beings to manifest His Glory (of course, no matter how many created things there are, they can not exhaust God's Glory).
Christ's death is concentrated manifestation of His infinite Goodness and mercy toward human beings.
Christ came to the world to save us, He suffered for our sake. Out of his goodness and mercy, He came to redeem us by His salvific love. God offered salvation to mankind (and this is His completely freely given gift to us, which He did not have to offer to us) out of his sheer mercy. There is nothing in us that "deserves" to be loved, we are from ourselves nothing, but by God's mercy, we are able to see His very essence. Why did God choose to manifest his Goodness in this extraordinarily high measure? Because he freely chose so, it is his simple will (which is sufficient reason to itself).
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To answer your question...
Why does God love us so much and place us above everything after everything we put Him through?
This goes to the root of all things - Why did God bother to create man? As this is completely foundational to understanding God's relationship with man, let's go the Catechism #1.
God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life.
The simplicity of this answer makes it almost too difficult to believe. God made man simply to have someone to share his goodness with. But this simple, pure intent of God is exactly what makes Him so deserving of our love and worship. The same Catechism goes on to say...
For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Savior. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life.
To put it simply then: we are deserving of God's love, because He loved us in creating us.
1 John 4: 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us
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