The World Meeting of Families this week is dedicated to the theme of love: “Love is the Mission of the Family.” It is very appropriate. Love is the heart of family life, as love is the heart of the Catholic faith. A new command I give you, says our Lord, “Love one another.” (John 13:34) “He who loves,” says St. John, “has been born of God and knows God.” (1 John 4:7) All the law and the prophets are summed up in the command to love, says St. Paul. “Love is the fulfillment of the law.” (Romans 13:8)
Psychology and scientific research confirm the inestimable power of love. Without love, children fail to thrive, become sick, and even die at much higher rates than those raised with love. Love is also the one ingredient that makes for a happy life. The Grant study of Adult Development spent millions of dollars and decades of research to find what leads to happy and fulfilled lives. Head researcher George Vallient summarizes the project thus: “The seventy-five years and twenty million dollars expended on the Grant Study points, at least to me, to a straightforward five-word conclusion: ‘Happiness is love. Full stop.'”
The dynamic of love – the stretching towards, the yearning, the reaching out to another – is built into the very fabric of our being. Our every conscious act – every thought, every intention, is thinking about something, is intending something, as directed towards something. St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) pointed out long ago this directional aspect of consciousness reflects the very Trinitarian nature of God. (De Trinitate, book IX.) The nature of soul, as image of God, has the capacity to love built into its essence.
Love is ennobling. It is elevating. Pope St. John Paul II says, “Love is the fullest realization of the possibilities inherent in man.” (Love and Responsibility). Pope Benedict teaches that love leads us from the inward looking self to liberation, to authentic self-discovery, and to God. (Deus Caritas Est) Scripture says that “God is love,” and “love is of God.” (1 John 4:7-8) Even the pagan philosophers knew something of the greatness of love. Plato wrote in the Symposium that true loves lifts us to a contemplation of the divine, to true virtue, and to friendship with God.
Catholic tradition recognizes many kinds of love. There is the love of friendship, the love of parents and children, love of one’s country, love of an ideal (like social justice, knowledge, or wisdom), but the human paradigm for all love is the love of marriage. The faithful, fruitful love of man and women is the image that Scripture most often uses to plumb the depths of love. In the Old Testament, God is husband to faithless Israel. In the New Testament, Christ is the bridegroom. The Church is the bride.
This love is reciprocal. In marriage we yearn both to give and to receive. We give our works and our service, but we also make a gift of our innermost self. We seek to draw close and to reveal our deepest thoughts and highest aspirations. This gift of self can be offered and received only freely. Outward service can be forced, but the gift of one’s innermost cannot be compelled. “For how do I hold thee,” writes Shakespeare, “but by thy granting.” (Sonnet 87)
Perhaps this helps explain why we take such delight in love. In love, I am faced with the sublime beauty of another soul. This beauty is not something I can compel or dominate, but only receive as a gift. Reciprocal love thus has a contemplative dimension. I can desire it, rejoice in it, offer and receive it. But I cannot hold it in my hand, or subject it to the domination of my will. The moment I try, love vanishes and is replaced by something perverse.
God’s love is infinite. Human love is finite. But human love helps me to approach that infinite love of God. In marriage, for instance, I take on my wife’s joys and sorrows as if they were my own. I learn to see through two more eyes. Suddenly, I am more than myself alone. I am another as well. We grow that love through children, and lo, now I am seven and not two. As love grows, my horizon expands towards the infinite.
In the mystical love of Christ, I come closest to the infinite love of God. “He who loves me,” says Christ, “will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him and dwell with him.” (John 14:23) How can the infinite God come to dwell within us? St. Thomas Aquinas explains, “As the known is the knower, and as the beloved is in the Lover.” (S.T. I.43.3)