And what is this that we call love?

Tell me, what is this mystic secret hiding behind the semblance of our lives,

And living in the heart of our existence?

What is this vast release coming as a cause to all effects, and as an effect unto all causes?

What is this quickening that gathers death and life and from them creates a dream

more strange than life, and deeper far than death?

[Kahlil Gibran, Prose Poems, (Andrew Ghareeb, trans.); New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1934, pp.5-6]

At the end of this Lenten journey, almost at the feast/betrayal/death, how can I not wonder at the vastness of God’s love and the dreadful depth of human fear that would kill it rather than embrace it?