“The Great Divorce”

When one does not accept there could be an absolute truth that could be different from his perspective, he has divorced himself from love.

That is because the truth is unchangeable, whether we ignore it or embrace it.

The truth is a Person, who happens to also be love. Since God is love (1 John 4:8) and Jesus is also God (one of the three Persons of the Holy Trinity), then when Jesus declared His identity as: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life” (John 14:6), one can deduce that God=love=truth. They are all one.

When one attempts to divorce truth from love, he begins to deny the truth, and he cannot experience the healing rays of authentic love. St. Augustine says he begins to curve in around himself in a circle, with him in the center of his own shrinking reality.

Love is a choice

As rational beings, we are not chained to our instincts and desires. Therefore we must employ our gifts of will and reason to choose to love.

This indicates love is indeed a choice, and often a hard one. The saints are living witnesses throughout the world who have chosen to love; even in the midst of terrible trials, they would not cling to worthless things.

The source

So how does one apply their example to his own life?

He goes to the Source of love, Who is love, through silence, prayer and finally through the Sacraments, as an otherworldly embrace of mercy.

When one searches for the truth, he is searching for love.

And the more he searches, the more stability he acquires in the midst of tribulations because love allows him to be steadfast, rooted and grounded in the knowledge of the love of God (Eph 3:17-18).

The truth sets free

Despite his own wretchedness and woundedness–or rather, because of it–he runs to the truth who also has begun to set him free (John 8:32):

free from his own blindness, from his own disjointed and fragmented living, from the addictions that bind him in misery, and free for giving and receiving authentic, unimpeded love.

“Say to the fearful of heart: Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God, he comes with vindication; with divine recompense he comes to save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall see, and the ears of the deaf be opened; then the lame shall leap like a stag, and the mute tongue sing for joy” (Isa 35:4-6).