"Truth Shall Make Thee Free"

I asked You that question, long ago. Remember? What did you mean by that? What “truth” did you talk about? Why does it make us free? Why say that sentence in such a mysterious way? It is so important! I want truth, I want freedom, so why not be more specific?

Things that refer to You are at the same time very simple and yet very deep. You did not need to explain because the answer lies in yourself. You did not speak of a “scientific” truth, which needs a lot of knowledge to understand. You were speaking to all, disregarding talents or skills. We keep on asking the truth to be “scientific”, yet all of our life we pursue happiness in a very unscientific way. And we don´t think that is untrue.

So I came to this answer, and it looked like your answer: the ultimate truth is... God is Love. Inside this very simple statement lie all your doctrine, and the explanation to all what surrounds us. The reason of our being here, where we came from, who we are, where we go, and any questions we might ask, since “You created us for You, and our heart is restless until it lays in You” (S. Agustin, Confessions, 1). The statement also hides within the formula to make this a better World. A civilization based on love, based on your doctrine. One we do not want to hear, because it is “not scientific”. And we keep searching for more complicated “scientific” answers which do not bring us peace nor happiness. We do not trust you.

“Love to God and neighbor is the hallmark of the Christian” (John Paul II, 2nd mistery of Joy, holy Rosary).

If we attend carefully to that truth, it is like a shoreless sea.

God is love. That is the ultimate definition of God, one in which all believers agree, disregard of the rest of their beliefs. God made the Universe from nothing (big bang included, if that was the way). What guides the universe and all what it has, is God’s love. The history of Universe, material and unmaterial is the History of God, who is love, and as such creates, makes itself acknowledged and inspires our actions if we leave them to do it. God never pushes.

If God is Love, and is the beginning and the end of all creation, and created us to rest in Him, happiness is to respond to God's Love.

God is Love, and in Love is our freedom, when it is true in its nature, as a reflex of God’s love upon us. Love is the gift of oneself, not a feeling. The feeling is an effect, not the origin of Love, to the point that you can love and not "feel". Christ on the cross loves us infinitely, and it is not a blissfull feeling, less a sentimentality.

To know that God exists, created me and loves me is what gives me strength to overcome sufferings and accept them, but also is the source of my happiness. Sufferings do not disappear, but they are looked upon from a different perspective. God did not come to end suffering, but to sublimate it. Loving God back is daring, rough at times, but freeing. All Saints I know about, have had big sufferings and disappointments. But all of them have been enormously happy. They were free. The were loved. They cared nothing else.

“God, through Christ, reveals humankind to humankind”. (John Paul II, Redemptoris Hominis. II, 1) We are called upon to be sons of God and build the civilization of Love. Love projects itself over time and space, and in doing so it becomes part of infinite. In that knowledge of infinity rests the one sole truth: that we will transcend, and as we will transcend, all the rest is deciduous. So to know that God is love and that I am part of it is the ultimate truth that I care most about. All the rest, will pass.

Alfredo Barriga