And He actually went a step further — imagine … even more … if this were not enough: at the Last Supper … on the night of His betrayal … He said: “A new commandment I give unto you: That you love one another, as I have loved you.” (St. John 13.34) We are to love, not as we would have others love us ... but as He loved us! … as Christ Himself loved us: And how much was that? We need only gaze upon Him on the Cross! … That much! Will it surprise you, then when I tell you that Christ does not ask us to bless those who curse us … or to love our enemies? He does not ask us to do this: In strikingly clear terms, he commands us to!
This is not an option for
a Christian, it is the Lord’s express will,
indeed … His commandment … that we should do so.
But How?There are, of course, people that we do not feel drawn to — people, in fact, whom we do not like at all … and some whom we even dislike intensely. It is, in fact, the case that there are people whom we simply find insufferable; even intolerable. And yes ... some people are even virtually consumed with evil ... but Christ still bids us to love them! “What,” you ask, “is this madness? How can I love whom I do not even like … and may even quite nearly detest?”
That, really, is the
question at hand: How is it possible for us to love not
only those we do not like, but even those who curse
us ... those who vitriolically hate us,
and even wish us dead! How profoundly we misunderstand love ...Many never come to understand the true nature of love at all. How many marriages end in divorce because “the flame of love” has apparently been extinguished? How many “beautiful romances” have ended in disillusionment? When some tragedy mars our beauty or encroaching age robs us of our youth, how often the “love” that had once accompanied it, simply dwindles … even seems to disappear. This terrible misunderstanding takes a toll on us that few of us recognize: We have invested our entire concept of love in merely one aspect of love alone: what is immediate and sensory. Love is reduced to, and then totally invested in, simply our emotions. Period. If the “feeling” is gone, then the “love,” we reason, has gone with it, too. If our senses… our emotional experiences, are no longer stimulated by the other, we speak of the love “withering.” We can no longer “feel” it. It no longer “excites” us. We, then come to the conclusion that the love has ceased. And in a sense, it has. That is, it has ceased to be sensuous. In other words, one facet of the many facets of a gem … has become less clear, less lustrous. The problem, however, is that it is precisely this facet of the jewel, and this facet alone … into which we have peered! … and the surface light that had dazzled us — in which we had found our own reflection — is no longer refracted off the stone. That is, we have looked at the stone — but not into it! We have seen … as it were been blinded by … fixated upon … the surface light — without ever exploring the other facets which reveal another …. and very different world within the one we claim to love; a world of extraordinary complexity and breath-taking beauty! It is, in short, the difference between holding a diamond at arm’s length and admiring its beauty... and placing one’s eye to the diamond, where, in crystalline light, we stand in awe of the deep beauty within that surpasses, in every measure, the superficial beauty we had seen from afar. It is the difference between peering at the beauty of another— and peering into the beauty of another. To carry this analogy further, we may say that the bringing of the diamond to the eye is an act of the will — not an instinctive response to some emotional or sensuous impulse. We approach it with purpose, rather than colliding with it serendipitously. It is a conscious attempt to penetrate, rather than to reflect upon, the deep mystery sequestered within it; to go beyond the appearances, however magnificent, to deeper and vastly more expansive realities — realities that ultimately touch upon the very image of God, in which the other is created.
This, I think, is the most
appropriate metaphor for the true nature of love.
What is Love ... after all?To begin with, it is crucial to understand that love is not simply a feeling ... love is preeminently an act of the will. In essence, to love is to have the other person’s total welfare at heart: it is to will them every good in all things, … and evil in none. Pause for a moment and think of someone you genuinely love. There is affection in that love, surely. But how does your love for that person express itself, manifest itself — apart from the affection that is uniquely experienced toward that individual? When we think upon it, we soon find that affective expressions of love, expressions simply involving our emotions, are only one part of our expression of our love for them. If our love is our affection only ... if it is solely a matter of feelings and emotions ... that is to say, if it is merely so many “impulses” over which we exercise little or no control impulses which compel us …toward the one that we say we love, how can we fail to see that it is little more than a compulsive act — and not real love at all! Can we truly say that we are loving them freely — whom we love compulsively? If we do not give them our love freely if we find ourselves compelled to love them it is no love at all. It is concupiscence, mere desire … masquerading as love; a seeking of selfish satisfaction that is much more invested in “me” than “her.” Love of this sort can only be understood in terms of a pathology. It is not what we understand when we entertain the notion of love. The point is this: Christ does not command us to have an emotion or a feeling toward a person. He cannot. Love of this sort cannot be commanded. It is simply the case, and for too many reasons to enumerate, that we dislike some individuals and find others simply intolerable. If we look at the matter carefully, we find that while we can restrain our emotions, we cannot compel them. We can restrain our anger, but we cannot spontaneously invoke it. We can no sooner be commanded to anger than to affective love. However, everything else, apart from what is affective, that is, apart from what pertains to feelings or emotions, can in fact be commanded— and is by Christ Himself! Once we remove the affective element of love (understood as a palpable “feeling,” as something “felt,” and expressed in purely emotional terms) … everything else that pertains to loving another person is, in fact, subject to our will.
We can will to do
good to others, even while we cannot will to
experience affection for them. It is
within our power to say, and to do, everything that
genuine love entails — everything by which we coherently
understand one person as loving another —even if we do
not have an emotional investment in that person! We can summarize this in Twelve Words:“To love another is to will them every good, and no evil.” This statement is nothing new, but in twelve words, it succinctly describes all that is authentic in love. Yes, we can love those who vex us terribly and who would even bring us to injury. Yes, we can love whom we dislike! The love of which Christ speaks, the love that He commands has nothing whatever to do with sensory gratification or emotional fulfillment. The sensory and emotional component of love between a man and a woman is a uniquely affectionate dimension of love that spontaneously arises between two people … in addition to their obligation to love one another in ways not pertaining to, or expressive of, emotional attachment. Understood in these terms, it is not the case of one love being superior to another. It is that affective love possesses a spontaneous dimension beyond the same obligations of love incumbent upon all of us. It fulfils the precepts within this one individual — and then exceeds them in the way of superabundance through an emotional investment that spontaneously emerges between two individuals in a way that does not characterize, but also does not diminish, their love for all others. Once we understand this, we realize that we are not called, still less compelled, to intimacy with others at large. That is absurd. Much of the touching and feeling that occurs with disturbing frequency at the Novus Ordo Mass is very likely the result of a confusion between love and intimacy. We tend to equate the one with the other, and when, with good reason, we feel uncomfortable with the intimate gestures of others in the pews with whom we are not on intimate terms, we are simply realizing this mistaken conflation of love and intimacy that is being forced upon us.
It is essentially the
difference between love as charity and love as intimacy.
After all …. God does not command us to be intimate
with our neighbors. Right?
Bless friend and enemy alike; it is no more than our duty and lest we think ourselves good and holy for doing this, Christ immediately calls us to humility … for He also tells us that: “When you shall have done all these things that are commanded you, say: We are unprofitable servants; we have only done our duty.” (St. Luke 17.10) And so we are.
Geoffrey K Mondello Comments? Write us: editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
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