Going deeper into God's safekeeping
Love's Safe Keeping
“The worldly subject understands that it is already possessed and comprehended.”
− Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-logic 4
In her book By Love Refined:
Letters to a Young Bride, Alice Von
Hildebrand writes to a bride under the
pseudonym Lily. She names the bride
Julie, the husband she names Michael.
Alice uses a very natural epistolary
style to express the application of
what she calls “Tabor vision” in the
concrete life of the newlyweds. The
two passages below show how applicable this concept is to the real world of human relationships:
You know him better than any other person because he has trusted you enough to reveal himself to
you in ways that he's revealed himself to no other human person. This mutual self-donation is the
ideal of marriage and the reason why your love for Michael isn't blind, but is the opposite: it's based
on a deeper knowledge and a clearer vision of him than any other person has. Only those who love
see; and those who see most clearly, love most deeply. 5
Lily continues to explain the bride's perception of her spouse as God made him:
All people are created in God's image and likeness; each one in some mysterious way reflects him
and has within himself an incredible beauty, which is mostly covered by the dust and dirt of sin.
When you fell in love with Michael, you were given a great gift: your love took you past
appearances and granted you a perception of his true self, who he's meant to be in the deepest sense
of the word. You discovered his "secret name." Those who love have