A person who has been wounded is comforted when someone who loves him awakens the hidden energy within him so that it passes through the wound in a healing stream. A person who is spiritually dried up is comforted when someone who loves him releases the wave of life within and everything is revived. A person who has lost things of great value, who has had his work destroyed, and his hopes dashed, is comforted when someone who loves him allies himself with something that lies at a deeper level, underneath the individual possession and the individual work; allies himself with the fundamental creative will, and rouses it to new activity; allies himself with that innermost soul that is above change and loss and is the eternal strength of the heart; admitting the loss that is lost in time, but winning it anew from the timelessness of faith in God. A person whose heart is sullied is comforted when someone who loves him is able to touch the purity that lives below the sin, and rouse new confidence in his ability to overcome the ugliness of his heart. A person who has sinned and can find no escape from his troubled conscience is comforted when someone who loves him is able, without the slightest presumption, to shed light on the sinner's self-deception, to release and fortify the will and open up new ways and possibilities. There is comfort when the lover is able to soften the hardened, to touch the paralyzed with relaxing warmth, to give a new direction to an erring mind. Human love, really pure and selfless human love, is able to comfort. But it soon attains its limits. Human love is not the love of God. Christ sent us the One who is "the nearness" between the Father and the Son: the Holy Spirit. He is the holy inwardness of God himself; in the secret language of love he is the "tie," the "kiss." In him God has come to us as the Comforter.
Monsignor Romano Guardini (died 1968) was born in Italy and was a renowned theologian and writer.
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