When love is true love

BY FR RALPH DE HAHN

Our present generation is absorbing a rather glowing and wildly outrageous manifestation of love and loving, thanks to the modern media in all its fascinating forms.

"Love is mystery, yet we do know that it is the way to happiness, since perfect happiness is union with God. "

And the consequences vibrate all about in anxiety, stress and devastation.

This cannot be the kind of love that the Creator intended: “May you be grounded in love and have the grace to comprehend…the breadth, length, height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge” (Eph 3:17).

In modern culture, the emphasis seems to be on pleasure and possession at all costs. There is very little mention of the Origin of love, or the purpose of the Creator, or even any form of responsibility.

Sexual activity is replaceable; love is not. The world of romantic music will speak of “a love for you that will never end”, or loving you “beyond eternity” and so on, because the human heart dreams of a love eternal—and so it is, but only with God.

Love is indeed mystery and uncreated. It is in God’s love that we share; it is secretive, sacred and ever searching; is ever alive, ever fresh, a mystery to be unravelled stage by stage; it is never stagnant but ever discovering more and more the uniqueness in others. And in this process we, in fact, transform ourselves through loving.

Yet, familiarity can breed contempt and staleness, boredom and blindness. When the human desire and hope and mystery is “solved” we look elsewhere—and then suffer the inevitable consequences. For, surely, what we completely possess we no longer desire.

We often use the phrase “falling in love”. That, however, may have very little to do with real love. It may well be some form of illusion, or even an addiction, or possibly some self-satisfying, emotional and thrilling infatuation which in turn leads to abuse, false expectations and heartbreak.

Nature, of course, is our real teacher—not books, movies or song lyrics. In the order of nature there is that inborn desire simply because the soul is ever yearning for its Creator. However, tragically, most people in this world are, in fact, unloved. The result is a world of many lonely, broken hearts.

There are many creatures and persons we would not like to be with, but we can still love when we come to comprehend the universal nature of love.

But true love is not blind; indeed, nothing is more clear-sighted. To define love is nigh impossible. It is mystery, yet we do know that it is the way to happiness, since perfect happiness is union with God.

Love is necessarily free, a concept so often neglected by lovers. God is perfect love, and he is totally free. Love is spiritual freedom; it is gratuitous, like a rose offering its perfume to all, giving freely and asking nothing in return.

Love is false when it seeks only self gratification, or is under any form of pressure, coercion or control; and when it is cruelly possessive it becomes very hurtful.

True love can exist and live and breathe only in freedom.

How can one truly love a person when one  manipulates them? Love is spiritual freedom. Good feelings are so easily and wrongly equated with love knowing that these feelings can come and go.

Love is eternal. It embraces all creation. It is never selfish, does not discriminate, clings to nothing. It widens its heart to all creation; it is in love with every living creature and all of life, ever sensitive to every uniqueness and beauty of all that is. True love excludes no one.

All this power is in us, in our human fabric; however, we ourselves place so many obstacles in the path to loving and happiness. We should remember the Rich Man who cannot yet enter the kingdom of love because he chooses to hold on to his possessions (Mk 10:21).

Jesus preached that if your eye or hand should prove an obstacle to the kingdom of true love, then discard it (Mt 5:29). Jesus also prayed to his Father “that the love with which you loved me may be in them” (Jn 17-26)—imagine God’s pure all- embracing love in us!

It’s easy to say, “I love you”, but it is quite another power to truly love, for “our love must not be mere words but something real and active” (1 Jn 3:18).

And finally, let’s revisit that famous text from chapter 13 of Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians. Let us prayerfully reflect on it and perhaps see it in a totally different light: “Love is always patient, always kind, does not seek self-interest; it is never jealous, never boastful, never conceited, never provoked, never rude or selfish or possessive; it does not take offence and is not resentful; it takes no pleasure in other people’s weaknesses but delights always in the truth; it is always ready to forgive, to trust, to hope and to endure whatever comes.

“This kind of love does not come to an end…there are three great things—namely faith, hope and love—but the greatest of these is love.”