sorry. tried a few times. cannot reply below directly. 

Hi, Lari,

Thanks.

This is the discussion I would very much like to participate.

I won’t try to speak for JPII’s mind, when he wrote down  “Love explained everything for me…”.

On the other side, this is a poem, not theology discussion, so I may share my own reflection on it.

And that is simply - God is Love.

Before we discuss Love. We shall stop for a moment to think about God.

I didn’t come to know God because神爱世人,赐下他的独生子….or 耶穌宝血覆盖 etc

Honestly, these discussion at that time gave me goosebumps.

My break-through came when I was reading Aquinas’ five arguments of the existence of God and "what God is not".

(Thanks to Google. Now we don’t have to read the big books to access this great mind. )

I read and read and by the part – God is not changeable. I remember as if I heard a click in my mind.

Ah, “I am who I am”. That’s it! All intellectual barriers if there were any left by then  were dissolved

It is probably irrelevant to our discussion, but I would like to add here. When I heard the poem the first time, it brought me back to this “click” moment.

… God came this far…., very close to our eyes

He was indeed very close, very.

So this is God,  omnipotent, omniscient, cannot be defined, immutable, doesn’t exist in time.

Now, God is Love. And it is central to Christian belief.

In my view, we have to first “accept” or “understand” this by “itself”.

Just like the click moment for “I am who I am”, I must accept God is Love as it is, not because of incarnation and Crucifixion . It is a pre-setup, precondition for any discussion of Cross.

In other words, this step works as a building block for us to understand 神爱世人,赐下他的独生子….or 耶穌宝血覆盖 etc not the other way around.

To accept “God is Love” doesn’t mean I understand the Love. No. It is Jesus Christ dying on the Cross help us to understand the Love and then come back to understand the whole idea “God is Love”. Profoundly meaningful.

I feel I shall add a disclaimer here. My RCIA hasn’t started yet, so NO, this is not what I learnt from Catholic church. I might be wrong, seriously wrong, just like years ago all the goosebumps I had.

Feel free to pour all the bricks to me and please to me along. I am sorry to the Catholic brothers here. I really shouldn’t use this pen name.