Love Does Not Doubt Love

The sacrifice of an immediate joy for a greater and far longer one, though thought in the moment as a folly or farce, is far more fantastic and favorable to one's very self than being gorged on the temporal pleasures or the immediate response of even a great good in its own right. It is often, in the delayed gratification resulting with a gift given of a far greater good than had one hoped first for, that its delayed but not demurred joy is not only larger and more lively a gift but so also more effective, covering every suffering or lack of happiness thus preceding. Love, though never counting the costs nor counting the returns, profits more from the latter one of delay than the former of the moment. Love does not answer always in the most perceptive of ways, but often it is in the quiet wait that its joys and its beautiful installment of what is yet to come is shown as a sweet enveloping light from Heaven, and then we recall that "He so loved the world that He gave us His only Son." (cf. Jn 3:16)

"I know that love strengthens every vocation, that love is everything, that it embraces all times and all places, because it is eternal." - St. Therese of Lisieux

And in that truth the hope and faith in Love Divine rests. In that Truth Love bears out the hope that is Hope for it was not seen and the Faith of the one who had not yet seen. Love, thus, does not doubt Love, and thus it waits steadfastly for the faith of the Fallen, of the Broken, of the Ones weakened but not lost to sin to then render their hearts and not their hands and thus make known fully how His Love has made their lives' "steadfastness manifest" for Love does all these things for its own sake and because its own property is mercy and truth itself.

"Faith without charity bears no fruit, while charity without faith would be a sentiment constantly at the mercy of doubt. Faith and charity each require the other, in such a way that each allows the other to set out along its respective path."

Benedict XVI, Apostolic Letter Porta Fidei

Deo gratias.