Anthony Esolen at Mere Comments, the blog of Touchstone Magazine, offers these moving reflections on the particularity of love, human and divine:

The gentle souled Albert Einstein, possessed of a devout spirit, once said that he believed in God, but God as conceived by the philosopher Spinoza, Deus sive natura — God, or nature, or the laws of physics. When Planck set forth his theory of quantum mechanics, Einstein at first rejected it, tartly asserting that “God does not play dice with the universe.” Something about the particularity of Planck’s theory offended him, was a mote to trouble the mind’s eye. I wonder if it is the same tiny but scandalous mote that troubles the minds of men who cannot see love at the heart of the universe. A law is abstract and general; if I step off the limb of a tree, gravity doesn’t care who I am or what I desire; I fall. But love is particular, and the dark history of man is studded with moments of love, when nothing in the world matters but this single being I love, for whom I would give life itself.

It is the stunning claim of Christianity and Judaism that this world is not a vast machine but a story, with startling turns, moments of truth, and characters unique and unrepeatable.

Dr. Esolen’s post is one of a series reprinting and commenting on sonnets by Fr. Donaghy, S.J., about the Stations of the Cross. Read the first entry here.