No letters were printed this week; here is the letter from four weeks ago:

Living the faith in love will lead to challenges in life, reader says

The deeper you live your faith in love, the greater the world will hate you.

The deeper faith is lived—not as mere words, but as love in action—the more it becomes a light that exposes the shadows around it. And light, though it gives life, often provokes resistance, misunderstanding and even hatred.

This doesn’t mean faith is meant to make us combative or bitter; rather, it means that authentic love will always be countercultural. Love unmasks selfishness. Love resists injustice. Love forgives when vengeance is expected. Love surrenders when pride demands to dominate.

In that sense, the world’s hatred becomes a strange confirmation that you’re living close to the way of Christ.

When a soul begins to live faith in love—not as doctrine alone, but as burning reality—it enters into what St. Paul calls “the fellowship of his sufferings” (Phil 3:10). The closer one draws to Christ, the more the soul shares in the paradox of his life: loved by the Father, hated by the world.

Mystical union always carries within it the mark of the cross. For the soul, this means being misunderstood, rejected or even despised, precisely because love has become its essence. Love strips away illusions, and people often resist being unmasked.

The greater your faith is embodied in love, the more you disturb the false peace of a world that prefers comfort over truth.

Therefore, the world’s hatred becomes a purifying fire: it detaches the soul from needing recognition, and anchors it in God’s hidden embrace.

The mystical paradox is this: the deeper you go into love, the more you enter into Christ’s humiliation; yet the more you are humiliated, the more you are raised into his glory. The cross is not the end, but the threshold to resurrection.

- Kirth N. Roach | Order of Carmelite Discalced Secular, Indianapolis