Dear Friends,
We all want to love and to be loved. The problem is, hardly anyone seems
to understand love, and so many people who want love dont seem to have
it. Harold Birke-Sivers explains that we can understand love better if we
recognize the depth of love to which we are called as an imaging of Gods
love for us. We can then see why love cant be just physical, or just
emotional. True love, the love that everyone wants to experience, is
about truly and deeply wanting what is best for the other person.
The fundamental significance of love for the human person is perhaps best
summarized by the evangelist: "God is love and he who lives in love lives
in God, and God lives in him. We are to love, then, because He loved us
first" (1 John 4:16,19). Therefore, love is significant to the human
person because man, through love, is "called to communion with God. This
invitation to converse with God is addressed to man as soon as he comes
into being. For if man exists, it is because God has created him through
love, and through love continues to hold him in existence. He cannot live
fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and
entrusts himself to his Creator" (CCC, n. 27). God's sustaining and
life-giving love affects man at every level of his being, that is,
physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
On the physical level, Pope John Paul II sees sexuality as a fundamental
component of our personality, that is, as one of the means in which human
beings express and live out God's life within us. As the image of God, we
are created for love and this love should be made manifest in sexual
intimacy. This physical expression of human love "includes right from the
beginning the nuptial attribute, that is, the capacity of expressing love
... in which a person becomes a gift andby means of this giftfulfills
the meaning of his being and existence" (Theology of the Body, p. 63).
Human sexuality, through which we participate in the mystery of loving
communion with God, can never find its full expression apart from the
intimate partnership of life and love established by the Creator in
marriage. Through this sacramental bond of unity and love "the conjugal
act preserves in its fullness the sense of true mutual love" (Theology of
the Body, p. 432), which is an expression of God's divine love within us.
Insofar as it entails sincere self-giving, growth in love is helped by
the discipline of the feelings, passions, and emotions. Thomas Aquinas
tells us that love is the root of all other passions because there is no
passion in the soul of man that is not founded on love of some kind. The
Catechism of the Catholic Church reiterates both Aquinas and Augustine
when it states that "to love is to will the good of another. All other
affections have their source in this first movement of the human heart
toward the good. Only the good can be loved" (CCC, n. 1766). On this
point, Joseph Pieper notes that "loving someone or something means
finding him or it good" (Joseph Pieper, About Love, p. 19). True love,
which perfects man in his totality as a human person, becomes realized in
him when he seeks and loves what is intrinsically true and ultimately
good. Love is perfected in man in as much as it leads to his ultimate
end: union with God
The gift of love is transformed through the power of Christ's redeeming
grace. Through His death and resurrection, we become partakers in God's
divine nature. Pope John Paul II puts it this way: "as an incarnate
spirit, that is, a soul which expresses itself in a body and a body
informed by an immortal spirit, man is called to love in his unified
totality" (Familiaris Consortio, n. 11). Love entails a total
self-giving, an act of selflessness that unites us to Christ crucified
and opens our hearts to accept God's divine and loving will. Without
love, man "remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself; his life
is senseless" (Redemptor Hominis, n. 25). The fundamental nature of love
itself, inherent within that symbiotic relationship of man and God, is
spiritual communion. The spiritual dimension of love must be understood
in light of Christ's redemption of the world, which calls us to God's
grace and love in relationship, for "to be truly human means to be
related in love" (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Co-Workers of the Truth, p.
235).
Human love should be a response to God's call to love one another as He
first loved us. However, due to our sinfulness, love's true meaning is
often distorted and reduced to silly platitudes and clichis which
permeate much of modern society ("love means never having to say you're
sorry," for example). God is often removed from society's understanding
and perception of love. Many purport that contraception, homosexuality,
and pornography are "loving" acts, but in reality this is not love at
all. They undermine the intimacy of a truly loving relationship with God
by rejecting the inherent openness to life-giving love through faithful,
permanent, and exclusive relationships that model God's own Trinitarian
life.
Love, when experienced solely on a physical, "feeling" level, creates a
spiritual void that can only be filled by emulating the life-giving love
of Jesus Christ. For those of us whose love is truly Christ-centered, we
must challenge contemporary society's interpretation of love's true
meaning by being living witnesses to God's truth in the world. The
question we must answer is not, "What is Love?" but rather, "How Deep is
Your Love?"
Bensilal Chacko, DE, USA.
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