God's love is not coercive. Gifted with freedom, we can turn away from the divine mystery. When choices are made that alienate and divide, we enter the realm of darkness and death. In reality, God, who is love, is always compassionate and filled with light and life. Throughout history, but never so dramatically as in our century scarred by the Holocaust, individuals and nations have raised the question of God's whereabouts in the face of horrendous suffering.
Evil is a fact.
The greatest human minds have not been able to explain this dark enigma. Faith asserts that wherever there is charity and love, we are in the presence of God. Faith asserts that God came among us, experienced evil from within the walls of history and rose above it. The Carmelite poet Jessica Powers specified that the volume of her selected poems should end with a verse praising the three-person God of unconditional and extravagant love. I drown within a drop of Him whose sea-bed is infinity.