When love fails

 A very negative proof that love is what binds us is found in the thousands and thousands of letters that I have received in the course of the years from persons who have fallen away from the Church or are outside of her because they entered into a second or third invalid marriage. All of these letters invariably express a great unhappiness on the inside: a boredom, an ennui, a disgust, and an anxiety, not because the letter writers have broken a law, but because they have broken a bond of friendship with Christ. Their loneliness also bears witness to the truth that when there is no person to love, there is no certitude. There’s only subjection. When there is the love of Christ, then love begins to believe everything. And since no one can ever surpass the love that Christ showed for us in redeeming us and founding his mystical body the Church, there can be no greater certitude in the world. That is the only kind of love that can save us from authoritarianism with its fear, and make us really loving creatures bound together by the tendrils of affection to him who loved us even to the point of death.