A Severe Mercy

Why?

"In this terrible judgment, I take into account what I know of myself. I am not one to plod along day by day or quietly to accept contracted horizons. And, necessarily, I should have had to move towards God or away. If seeing Davy's most lovely love of her Incarnate Lord in hospital had not brought me to seek Him first, would anything else have done it - except her death? Contemplating these dreadful possibilities - coming to hate my God! coming to hate my dear love! - I cry, even as I write: 'No, no! My God! It could not have happened! Never!' But the I that cries out is the man who knew her death in that winter dawn and all that followed.

If my reasoning - my judgment - is correct, then her death in the dearness of our love had these results: It brought me as nothing else could do to know and end my jealousy of God. It saved her faith from assault. It brought me, if Lewis is right, her far greater help from eternity. And it saved our love from perishing in one of the other ways that love could perish. Would I not rather our love go through death than hate?

If her death did, in truth, have these results, it was, precisely, a severe mercy" (p.216).