Frankl, in recounting his experience of being reduced to a possession-less slave in the concentration camp wrote: “A thought transfixed me: For the first time in my life I saw the truth … The truth that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved … For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, ‘The angels are lost in the perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.'” What is Creator’s perspective?

There is divine wisdom in all of these observations. Love is the force of the universe that created everything and keeps everything going. When you take away love, there will be a diminishment and an eventual deterioration and disassembly of anything that is devoid of love for too long a time. On the surface, talk of love seems like a faint hope, a small consolation if one is suffering, especially when in physical pain and dire emotional anguish, facing imminent death, and the torment of seeing others being tortured and in a hopeless situation under the control of depraved beings who delight in their suffering. To talk of love in such a setting or about such a circumstance seems almost perverse because most think of love as a frill, a frivolity, an idle pastime, but not serious business, something to be enjoyed, and indulged in as though it were serving a sweet tooth by having a box of candy nearby. What Viktor Frankl is talking about speaks to the central importance of love in everything. Keep in mind as you read his words, he is speaking not only his truth but the truth of the divine because he has been to the core of evil and saw the power of love to surmount it. This is the life he lived. While he was under physical control of the depraved camp administration and guards all too willing to kill him on a whim, he saw through that to the reality of love being in existence as proof of the divine and not a coincidence. The two are integral—divinity and love. When there is thoughts of love, there is upliftment because it is divine to have thoughts of love. Even something seemingly selfish, yearning to be with a loved one, like a spouse, when you are apart, that is not an act of selfishness, that is an act of self-service and completely in alignment with the importance of love for a happy, well-adjusted human being and the serving of your soul, which does need care and feeding in the form of love to flourish. Love is your business because love is God’s business. The plight of the angels referred to is the difficulty they have to experience and surmount each and every moment, being bathed in divine love but serving those for whom love is denied and are in a dark world. It is that extreme of contrasts which can be heartrending, but the author of these words was seeing that dilemma from the vantage point of a human occupying a dark world and not the angel. Because love is all-powerful, the angels are powerful and they can look evil in the eye and know that they are safe, and all to whom they impart love will be raised up, and do their work with joy and satisfaction. They understand you all have the light to return to and will be with them one day. More so than human beings, the angels feel compassion for your tormentors. The perpetrators of evil are in the most extreme distress and diminishment because they are so far removed from love. This is the irony of what Frankl describes about those in the camps who retained their humanity, but not realizing they have the antidote for what ails their tormentors.