Trying to Define Love

Google Image

Years ago in Ireland, the daughter of a cousin of my grandmother had a child out-of-wedlock. I heard this from my brother, a priest, who said the girl’s family took the baby from the mother and had the child raised by her grandmother.

My brother spoke approvingly of this arrangement, saying that the girl’s family decided that if she was irresponsible enough to have a baby out-of-wedlock, she was too irresponsible to be a mother.

When older, my brother changed his mind about that opinion, and although I thought it made sense when I first learned about it, I, too, grew to disapprove. The girl had a right to raise her child and should have had the support and love of her family.

Grow in Faith?

As with my brother and me, most people grow in their faith and faith-related views as they age. They may come to better understand the requirements of their faith and gain some wisdom just by living the trials and joys of life.

Last week, I wrote a blog called “What Love Demands,” and afterwards noticed an anonymous comment on the LinkedIn website – among the online sites where I publish the blog weekly. The comment consisted of three words: “What is love?”

An excellent question, and though I’ve addressed it in previous blogs, I think it worthwhile to respond to the reader’s question. Not that I’m an expert on love, mind you. But I’m beginning to understand better the importance of love in Jesus’ overall message, and can’t avoid writing about it in a blog dedicated to matters of faith.

Somewhere along your own educational path, you may have learned that the ancient Greeks categorized love in an effort to define it. Online, I found lists of 3, 4, 6 and even 9 kinds of love, according to the ancient Greeks. Here, I’m going to list only three.

Google Image

The first is eros, or romantic love. The second is phila, or “brotherly love, friendship, affectionate regard for and loyalty to friends, family, and community.” The third is agape, which is selfless love or “charity.” Obviously, these kinds of love often overlap. Many would say it’s not necessary to define love at all, that you’ll know it when you see it.

As I’ve mentioned in the last few blogs, I’m reading a book called “Jesus, an Historical Approximation” by Jose Antonio Pagola, a Spanish theologian and Scripture scholar. Using the writings of modern biblical scholars - some believers, some not – he is shedding light on the culture, economics, politics and daily life of people living at the time of Jesus. I’m finding the book to be an eye-opener.

One of the principal lessons I’m drawing from the book is the importance of Jesus’ message about God’s love for humans and humans’ love for God. Although the Hebrew Bible has references to God as Father, writes Pagola, Jesus uses a unique word for God - Abba, the Aramaic word that is a children’s term, similar to “Daddy.”

Jesus felt such intimacy with God that he rejected the words for God normally used in the Judaism of his time and before, words that emphasized God’s aloofness and grandeur. Paramount for people wanting to be Jesus’ followers, however, was his “commandment” of love.

His parables about the Prodigal son, illustrating the Father’s tenderness for his wayward son, and the Good Samaritan, showing to what lengths we should go to love others, are examples.

Most Moving Description

These lessons were not lost on early Christians. And St. Paul’s description of love in his letter to the Corinthians (Chapter 13) is for me, the most moving description of love possible. It’s as much about what love is not as what it is.

“Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

I hope this, to some extent, answers the anonymous person’s question about love. I wish I had had this in mind – and I’m sure my brother would have wished it, too – when we judged the Irish relative who became a much-maligned mother.