Only Love

In the famous novel, “The Diary of a Country Priest,” -1 there is a moving scene in which the priest encounters a woman who is completely turned in on herself. She has been abandoned by her daughter and betrayed by her husband. Death has claimed her young son. And her heart has hardened. Beseeching her to unlock her hardened heart, the priest says, “Hell is not to love anymore.”

A well-known psychologist asserts that the business of loving another human being is the most challenging of all human enterprises because of the demands it makes on us. Because of these demands, many of us never have loved another person deeply. Or perhaps we have loved one or two deeply and have been hurt by it, and so we have retreated. One of the greatest needs today is the strength to be able to move in and love another person at a profound level. We know the tragedy of so many husbands and wives who…