The Power of Choosing real Love

I have recently started reading Fyodor Dostoevsky famous novel The Brothers Karamazov. I was struck by the incredible cast of characters that considers this the greatest novel ever, (Nietzsche, Freud, Kurt Vonnegut, Albert Einstein, Peter Kreft, Father John Neuhaus, the priest who married my wife and I, Father Don Haggerty, Dorothy Day). I thought wait a minute, Nietzsche, Freud, Peter Kreft, Dorothy Day? What am I missing. The first two were atheists, and the argument can be made that no two people did more damage to the world of thought that Nietzsche or Freud. Shouldn't I stay away from a book that they both consider the best ever. The answer is no, because truth is beautiful. A very evil man can look at a sunset and love it, he could even love it so much that it changes him. There are two very famous quotes from the Brothers Karamazov, the first one is, "Beauty will save the world," Nothing convinces us of the truth more that beauty, the beauty in creation, the lived beauty of a holy life.

The second famous quote was found at the bedside of Dorothy Day upon her death. When I first read it, I thought it was too extreme, but as I thought about it, its beautiful. Dorothy Day thought that working with the poorest of the poor would just be all romance, and what she found was quite different. Love is hard, but even on True Love's worst day, its so much better than Love in Dreams. Its our choice, we can choose to do all the heavy lifting of real love, or we can accept a counterfeit our whole life. Here's the quote;

“I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labour and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science. But I predict that just when you see with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting farther from your goal instead of nearer to it- at that very moment I predict that you will reach it and behold clearly the miraculous power of the Lord who has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you.” Fyodor Dostoevsky,The Brothers Karamazov, chapter 4