'Because of the increase of evildoing, the love of many will grow cold,' Jesus warns, as St. Matthew's gospel reports. It's part of a general warning that, because of persecution, many will be led into sin, will hate & betray each other, and false prophets will come & deceive many -- as a result, love, divine charity, will grow cold in the faithful.
St. Paul tells us what charity is in the famous passage in 1st Corinthians -- and this is the love that's to be practiced especially with regard to those who don't share our own faith. Even if people are up to their eyeballs in dreadful things, divine love prompts us to believe that whatever their sins or errors, they're seeking God & looking for truth. The opposite attitude is pride, the belief that we can never be "like that": but St. Paul warns us that we can fall, can be cut off from Christ, through the failure of love and its corollary, humility. Love is transient when it isn't joined to humility, to the recognition that we're fallible & changeable & wholly subject to our own passions & bigotries, without the help & mercy of God.
There is a mercilessness in the air in the U.S. and elsewhere, a madness that resembles something out of Dante's inferno. We can't drive it out: but we can make certain that it doesn't drive us. Heart needs to speak to heart, in hope & in humility, or the fiery gales will be fed by our own worst impulses.
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