Without love, reality cannot appear.

Why does life, as a whole, appear as such a horror, at times beauty seem entirely absent from Creation ?

How is it possible that prisoners deep in hellish gulags can affirm the goodness of reality ?

Jonathan Bieler, speaking on Ferdinand Ulrich’s epistemology, hints at an answer :  

"…the full meaning of truth is epistemologically speaking only realized in the second operation of the intellect, the judgement, with consists in assigning or separating, affirming or negating features of the object of intellection.

Actively saying “yes” or “no” is an essential part of human intellection and mirrors…the “resoluteness” with which the gift of being is given into concrete subsistence. 

Only by this judgement can the human being comprehend being (esse), as he puts himself and his existence at stake in the judgement and verdict over what is and what is not.

Thereby the human being imitates the “decidedness” of esse, which is always already handed over by God to beings in order to award them with subsistence.

….the pre-socratic rule that “like is only comprehended by like” as meaning that only by committing in a similar way to beings as God is committed to them ….can the human person conceive of being as love.

In this sense, man recreates the world within himself, so as to become a microcosm.

Knowledge and love are thus intimately related, as through love man can say ever deeper yes to what he has come to know through the intellect and realize it.

What is more, through love the human person discovers the deepest meaning of creation, which he or she cannot discover unless by imitating the love that forms the background of creation itself."

David Bentley Hart arrives at a similar conclusion :

"Thus, for Christian thought, knowledge of the world is something to be achieved not just through a reconstruction of its “sufficient reason,” but through an obedience to glory, an orientation of the will toward the light of being and its gratuity; and so the most fully “adequate” discourse of truth is worship, prayer, and rejoicing.

Phrased otherwise, the truth of being is “poetic” before it is “rational” (indeed, it is rational precisely because of its supreme poetic coherence and richness of detail), and thus cannot be known truly if this order is reversed.

Beauty is the beginning and end of all true knowledge: really to know, one must first love, and having known, one must finally delight; only this “corresponds” to the Trinitarian love and delight that creates. The truth of being is the whole of being, in its event, groundless, and so, in its every detail, revelatory of the light that grants it....

…beauty is present only where there has been love, but only vanity where the light of love has not fallen…love is necessary first, before beauty can be seen, for love is that essential “mood” that intends the world as beauty and can so receive it…"

It appears that our intentional stance can either invite reality to disclose itself as gift, or shut out any apprehension of the Good and Beautiful completely.