"Like you, I poise alertly and open my senses to try to read the air, the clouds, the sun's slant, the little movements of the animals, all in the hope I will learn the secret of whether I am loved." I am like you," said Father Damien to the snakes, "curious and small." He dropped his arms. But, my friends, what exactly is love here? How to define it? Does God's love have anything at all to do with the lack or plethora of good fortune at work in our lives? Or is God's love, perhaps, something very different from what we think we know?. In contrast, our pains, illnesses, the deaths of those we love, our poverty, our innocent misfortunes-those we take as signs that God has somehow turned away. In the gifts we are given-children, good weather, money, a happy marriage perhaps-we find assurance. Are we loved by the one who made us? Constantly, we look for evidence. "What is the question we spend our entire lives asking? Our question is this: Are we loved? I don't mean by one another. The snakes slid quietly among the feet of the empty pews. “What is the whole of our existence," said Father Damien, practicing his sermon from the new pulpit, "but the sound of an appalling love?"
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