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WHAT IS LOVE?
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Love has many descriptions and definitions. Sadly, love also has many misuses. C S Lewis famously once observed that love covers a multitude of sins, but too often by just being another name for them. How can that be?
I suppose that there may be too often a tendency to confuse love with romantic love or with passion. These latter can be exhilarating and pleasurable and delightful, but in the end, they are simply side-effects, expressions, and not the essence, of deep and authentic love. They thrive when real love is present; when it is not, they are simply a mask—a game of make-believe. And when the game is over, we leave…
Lewis described authentic love as a steady wish and will for the good of the other. Jesuit lecturer John Powell called true love (unconditional love) a commitment to be for the other what the other needs us to be. Thomas Merton once used the word “disinterested” to define true love: “disinterested” not because of lack of care, but because of lack of self-interest: I love you because you are you and not for anything I can get from you. These people demonstrate the awe-filled responsibility of loving. They show the price one pays, truly to love another. Put slightly differently, if Les Miserables’ ending is true, that “To love another person is to see the face of God,” what might we be willing to pay as the price to see the face of God in another? Where would we look to see God’s face?
Francis of Assisi saw the face of God in a leper. Don Bosco saw the face of God in street children. Mother Teresa of Calcutta saw the face of God in the poorest of the poor. Mother Cabrini and Fr Michael McGivney saw the face of the poor in Italian and Irish immigrants to America, hated for being “foreigners” and especially for being Catholic. Jesus (if I may put it this way) saw the face of God in tax collectors, prostitutes, and the repentant man crucified next to Him. Where are we willing to look? More importantly, where are we not willing to look?
Let me return to C S Lewis’ definition of love. It is the one that best embraces the teaching of Jesus (Matthew 5:43-48) about love of enemies. How can I love someone who hates me and wants evil for me? The simple answer is to choose to desire the good for that person. Please see two details here: 1) to love in this sense is possible even if one doesn’t like the other; and 2) this is not about what the other wants, or even about what you might want for the other. It is simply to ask God to give the other what the other needs. Who knows what that might be? We don’t; God does. Let’s let our love of others take us to the “throne of grace,” and let the Lord decide that. Let’s just let our expression of love of enemies be one of desire for their welfare.
Other ways of loving people are more concrete and more costly. Are we ready truly and deeply to love? And are we ready to do it all because we see the face of God and are in love with the Lord?
