What do people think about love?

Virgil rightly affirms in the Bucolics: ''love conquers all'' (''Omnia vincit amor''), and adds: ''let us, too, yield to love'' (''et nos cedamus amori'').

Dante affirms in his ''Divine Comedy'' that it is ''love which moves the sun and the stars'' (Paradise, XXXIII, v.145). In Dante, light and love are one and the same thing: they are the primordial creating power which move the universe.

The term 'love' has today become one of the most frequently used and even misused words, a word to which we attach quite different meanings: we speak of love of country, love of one's profession, love between friends, love of work, love between parents and children, love between family members, love of neighbour and love for God.

Though it has many and diverse meanings and interpretations:

The word love is ''a primordial word, an expression of a primordial reality; it cannot be simply abandoned, but it should be reconsidered, purified and brought back to its original splendour, so that it can enlighten human life and bring it on the right path''.

Love between man and woman emerges as the archetype of love par excellence, on the basis of which, at first sight, all other types of love fade away. While realising such love, body and soul are inseparably joined, and human beings glimpse an apparently irresistible promise of happiness.

Where does love come from?

According to the Christian conception, love comes from God; rather God himself is love: ''God is love; he who remains in love abides in God and God abides in him'' (1 Jn 4:16). To say that ''God is love'' is equivalent to affirming that God loves.

What are the dimensions of love?

Love has three dimensions or manifestations: eros, philia and agape (caritas).

What are the characteristics of eros?

Eros has the following principal characteristics:

• It means ''worldly'' love.
• It is, as it were, rooted in the very nature of man.
• In the Bible it has its origin in the goodness of the Creator.
• It wants to raise us ''in ecstasy'' towards the Divine and lead us beyond ourselves.
• It could be degraded to pure ''sex'', a commodity, a simple ''thing'' that can be bought and sold. In such a case:

There is a degradation of the human body, which is no longer fully integrated in the freedom of our existence; it is no longer a vital expression of the totality of our being, but is relegated to the purely biological sphere.

Man himself becomes a commodity, deprived of his dignity and dehumanised.

Eros calls for a path of ascent, renunciation, purification and healing. It needs discipline and purification to give man not the pleasure of an instant, but a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence, of that beatitude for which our entire being yearns.

Only in this way can eros be transformed into agape: in this way love for the other is no longer self-seeking, but becomes concern and care for the other, readiness to sacrifice for the other and openness even to the gift of a new human life.

What does ''philia'' mean?

''Philia'' means the love of friendship. The term is used with added depth of meaning in Saint John's Gospel in order to express the relationship between Jesus and his disciples.

What characteristics does love intended as agape (caritas) have?

Love intended as agape:

• Is an ablative love: love becomes care and concern of the other and for the other. It is no longer self-seeking, a sinking in the intoxication of happiness; instead it seeks the good of the beloved: it becomes renunciation and it is ready, and even willing, for sacrifice. The happiness of the other becomes more important than mine. One does not want to only receive any longer, but to give, and it is precisely in this liberation from oneself that man finds himself and is filled with joy.
• Is indeed ''ecstasy'', not in the sense of a moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey, an on-going exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God: ''Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it'' (Lk 17:33), says Jesus.
• Is not merely a sentiment. Sentiments come and go. It is not just a sentiment, but involves all dimensions and manifestations of the person. Love even involves our will and our intellect. With his word, God addresses himself to our intellect, to our will and to our sentiments in such a manner that we can learn to love him ''with all our heart and soul''.
• Seeks to become definitive, that is, in a two-fold sense: in the sense of exclusivity (''this particular person alone'') and in the sense of being ''forever''. Love embraces the totality of existence in each of its dimensions, including the dimension of time. It could hardly be otherwise, since its promise looks towards its definitive goal: love looks to the eternal.
• Is not something foreign, placed besides or rather against eros, but eros and agape are united together.

How are eros and agape united together?

Love is a single reality, although it has different dimensions; from time to time, one or the other dimension may emerge more clearly. In reality, eros and agape don't allow themselves to be completely separated from each other. Eros and agape don't oppose each other, rather they harmonise together. They demand that they never be completely separated from one another, rather the more both of them, in their different aspects, find a proper unity in the one reality of love, the more the true nature of love is realised.

Even if eros is at first mainly covetous and ascending - a fascination for the great promise of happiness - in drawing near to the other, it is less and less concerned with itself, increasingly seeks the happiness of the other, is concerned more and more with the beloved, bestows itself and wants to ''be there for'' the other. The element of agape thus enters into this love, for otherwise eros is impoverished and even loses its own nature. On the other hand, man cannot live by oblative, descending love alone. He cannot always give, he must also receive. Anyone who wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift.

In the account of Jacob's ladder, the Fathers of the Church saw this inseparable connection between ascending and descending love, between eros which seeks God and agape which passes on the gift received, symbolised in various ways (cf. Gen 28:12, Jn 1:51).

So love which initially appears as eros between man and woman, should then be interiorly transformed into agape, in the giving of oneself to the other, and thus respond to the very nature of eros.

In monogamous marriage, which corresponds to the image of a monotheistic God, the encounter between eros and agape are apparent. Marriage based on exclusive and definitive love becomes the icon of the relationship between God and his people and vice-versa. God's way of loving becomes the measure of human love. This close connection between eros and marriage in the Bible has practically no equivalent in extra-biblical literature.

What place does agape occupy in Christianity?

It is the foundation and the centre of Christian faith. In fact:

God creates everything out of love.

Man is especially created by God-Love in order to love, and he is created with the capacity to love. To say that man is created in the image of God means that he resembles God in love.

God loves man freely, and he loves him in infinite ways. In fact God:

Is more intimate to me than I am to myself; He knows me better than I know myself.

Forgives the sins of man.

Himself becomes man in Jesus Christ, so that man becomes a son of God.

Jesus Christ:

Is the one in whom God assumed a human face and a human heart.

Is Love that is given up till the point of death: he dies and rises from the dead to save man.

Even gives himself as our food, in the Eucharist: what was ''being'' in front of God now becomes, through the participation in the gift of Jesus, participation in his body and in his blood; it becomes an intimate and profound union with Him.

While we are united to Him, we are united to one another, thus forming one big family: the Church: ''Because there is one bread, we, though many, are one body: for we all partake of the one bread'', as Saint Paul says (1 Cor 10:17).

 In Christianity, agape:

Is the greatest reality: ''But the greatest of them all is love'' (1 Cor 13:13).

Is at the beginning of Christian being. In fact at the foundation of Christian being there is neither any ethical decision nor any great abstract idea, but the encounter with an event, with a person, with love, which gives life a new horizon and a proper definitive direction.

Has an influence at the personal, social and cultural level and proposes a lifestyle that breaks the effimerous and egoistic circle within which we are closed.

Leads us to consider man always as a single-dual being, in which spirit and matter penetrate one another, and in this manner both experience a new nobility.

Does not do away with the legitimate differences, but harmonises them into a superior unity, which is not imposed externally, but which internally provides form, as it were, to the whole.

Blends the love of God together with the love of neighbour: in the smallest we meet Jesus himself and in Jesus we meet God. I love, in God and with God, even the person I don't like or perhaps I don't know. He wants us to become friends of his friends. ''Worship'' itself, Eucharistic communion, includes the reality both of being loved and of loving others in turn. A Eucharistic which does not pass over into the concrete practice of love is intrinsically fragmented.

Man can realise agape, in so far as:

He is created in the image of God-Love and is loved by God, and therefore loves with all the fullness of his potentialities.

He receives the Holy Spirit as a gift in Baptism and Confirmation.

Agape involves an open-ended process which is never finished and complete; throughout life, it changes and matures, and thus remains faithful to itself. In fact, love is not found readymade, but grows; we could learn to love slowly in such a manner that it embraces more and more all our strengths and opens us the road for an upright life.

To Dostoevsky's question: what kind of beauty will save the world? The answer is: the bursting beauty of God's love.

Does faith reduce man's capacity to love?

Not at all. Rather, it increases its potentiality: faith educates us to love beyond the limits which history, culture, politics and character impose in their relationship with others. Thanks to faith, one learns to look at the other person no longer only through one's eyes and with one's feelings, but according to Jesus Christ's point of view. Every believer in Christ can love more and better. Whoever moves closer to God, does not distance himself from men, but rather gets truly closer to them.

What model do we have of agape?

Jesus Christ is the model par excellence.

He is truly the incarnate love of God. In Him eros-agape reach their most radical form. In His death on the cross, Jesus gives Himself in order to raise man up and save him. And in doing so, He expresses love in its most sublime form, in so far as it accomplishes that turning of God against Himself in order to raise man up and save him.

Jesus gave this act of oblation an enduring presence through His institution of the Eucharist, by giving His very self under the species of bread and wine as the new manna which unites us to Him. By participating in the Eucharist, even we get involved in the dynamics of His gift. We are united to Him and at the same time we are united to all those He gives himself, thus becoming ''one body''. In this way, love for God and love for neighbour are truly united.

N.B.: In order to deepen your understanding of the subject, you could read Pope BENEDICT XVI's encyclical, Deus Caritas est, LEV, 2006.