‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest
and first commandment.’ And a second is like it: ‘You shall love
your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all
the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:37-39)

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is
from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. (1
John 4:7) Therefore encourage one another and build up each other,
as indeed you are doing. (1 Thessalonians 5:11) Love one another
with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do
not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice
in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. (Romans
12:10-12)

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels,
but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and
all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains,
but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions,
and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have
love, I gain nothing. Love is patient; love is kind; love is not
envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on
its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice
in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things,
believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love
never ends… And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three;
and the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:1-8,13)

Finally, all of you, have unity of spirit, sympathy,
love for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind. (1 Peter
3:8)

…..

Remember the song, ‘What the world needs now is love,
sweet love?’ It does. But it all depends what you mean by ‘love’.

I am using the term ‘romantic love’ to refer to psycho-sexual
attraction; ‘realistic love’ is the strong desire to act towards
another for their well-being. Romantic love has a selfish component;
realistic love is unselfish. Romantic love is subjective, realistic
love is objective. Romantic love is driven by feelings, (which
is why we ‘fall in love’), realistic love is a choice of the will.
Romantic love is love-responding-to-worth; realistic love is love-before
or love-apart-from-worth. Romantic love is ‘circle love’: it presumes
a reciprocal loving; true ‘realistic love’ is ‘arc love’: it is
love which creates worth in the object, even if the love is not
returned. Romance can be addictive; there are self-help groups
around the world for ‘romance addicts’. Realistic love is a choice
of one’s will. Romantic love happens when a need in me corresponds
with a response ‘out there’. Realistic love is a gift.

In romantic love, I respond to what the other is
for me. In realistic love I grant the other autonomy and respect
- indeed I see them as made in the image of God, and because God
loves that person so do I. In romantic love I relate to the other
for the good I will derive from the relationship; in realistic
love I relate to the other for the good he or she will derive
from the loving.

Romantic love is not, repeat not, the basis of a
good marriage. It’s nice to have a pretty-coloured car (ask my
wife or daughters) but a car is much, much more than its colour.
Romantic love is primarily an emotional experience, it can cause
irrational behaviour, and can immobilize its ‘victim’. One form
of romantic love is ‘infatuation’ (from the Latin infatuare =
‘foolish’).

How does one graduate (yes, that’s the best word)
from ‘romantic love’ to ‘realistic love’ in a marriage? First,
there must be a commitment by one’s will that the marriage vows
were taken seriously: not grudgingly but joyfully. There must
be a resolve to act lovingly, to forgive, even when you feel justified
in witholding your love. During courtship, romantic love steered
the relationship: holding hands, kissing, sharing your life story
and your hopes and dreams, a succession of delightful experiences…
Now in ‘realistic love’ romance may still play a part (ask: if
I were courting him/her now what would we enjoy doing?) but strong,
enduring relationships are not forged by romantic love. Experts
say you can expect romantic love to last about three years…

Lyle came for counseling reluctantly. His wife, Christine
had been seeing me, after she discovered Lyle’s infidelity. Lyle
was a Christian, he said, worshipped every Sunday, taught a Sunday
School class, but, yes, he had been seeing another woman. ‘I just
fell out of love with Christine. We had a good relationship, but
somewhere it lost its zip. After the kids came along she was preoccupied,
and I got to know a very caring lady at work. She listened to
me (Christine was too busy to do much of that), and gradually,
well, you know, we found we were very special to each other. I
love Fiona, but I respect Christine. I don’t want to leave Christine,
but I guess she can’t cope with two women fulfilling different
needs in me. And I can’t help it if I fall out of love with one
woman and into love with another…!’

Really? I asked Lyle to tell me his ‘story of love’
(or lack of love) from his childhood. His parents were stern,
unemotional members of a Christian sect. He entered adulthood
with a lot of maturing to do, and at first the relationship with
Christine was ‘fantastic’. She ‘met his needs’ for emotional warmth,
sex, companionship, but mothering removed her attention away from
him, and he couldn’t cope with that. Christine’s version in summary
was that really Lyle was a little boy in a man’s body, and married
her to find a nurturing mother. He had to grow up and take responsibility
for himself. ‘I’m sick of playing games just to pamper this little
boy I married…’

One writer-counselor describes six basic styles of
love. ‘Best friends love’ has a depth of warm and mutual affection,
but the friendship is not destined for romantic love or marriage.
‘Game-playing love’ involves an emotional contest leading to fighting
and flirting. ‘Logical love’ is pragmatic; the relationship is
one of ‘fair exchange’. ‘Possessive love’ swings from passionate
devotion to jealousy; there is a strong and immature desire to
possess and be possessed by the other. ‘Romantic love’ is totally
emotional. Its symbol is Cupid’s arrow piercing the heart. St.
Valentine’s Day is special, as are physical attraction, and small
and frequent niceties and gestures. Finally ‘unselfish love’ involves
self-sacrifice, acceptance, forgiveness, responding to the other’s
needs more than to one’s own. (H. Norman Wright, Questions Women
Ask in Private, Ventura: Regal Books, 1993, pp.222-3).

Now don’t get me wrong: romantic love is part of
our Creator’s design for us (and the procreation of the human
race). The Song of Solomon is a beautiful poetic celebration of
sexual, romantic love. Romantic love is a primal instinct for
boundary-less intimacy. It involves an evocative use of voice,
touch, gestures and vision, especially the vision of the beloved’s
body. When you’re ‘in love’, you see the other not as just another
creature, but as very special, very beautiful person. You can’t
build a successful marriage on romantic or erotic love alone.

Well, then, how does one learn to love in a more
mature way? In Christian terms the one loving must be sure of
being loved – by others, and also by God. This process begins
with physical and emotional nurturing by a mother who dedicates
herself to the care and well-being of the baby. Reliable, trustworthy
parental love provides the context for the child to develop an
inner security and confidence and the internalized belief that
he or she is lovable. So love for others grows out of a healthy
self-esteem.

What if one’s upbringing did not provide this kind
of nurturance? Can one’s reservoir of self-love be filled some
other way? The answer is yes, in two ways – through work and through
faith. We can receive love from significant others who are not
parents, or family: this process involves someone relating to
us with integrity, so that eventually we gain the impression that
we are, indeed, after all, lovable. Ultimately, however, love
like God’s love is a gift, which we receive from him by faith.
All the Christian saints attest to that. Selfless ‘gift-love’
is not something we learn in a self-improvement course. Rather
it is gained through prayer, and then through practice.

…..

Of all the misconceptions about love the most powerful
and pervasive is the belief that ‘falling in love’ is love, or
at least one of the manifestations of love. It is a potent misconception,
because falling in love is subjectively experienced… When a
person falls in love what he or she certainly feels is ‘I love
him’ or ‘I love her’… But the experience of falling in love
is specifically a sex-linked erotic experience…

The essence of the phenomenon of falling in love
is a sudden collapse of a section of an individual’s ego boundaries,
permitting one to merge his or her identity with that of another
person… In some respects (but certainly not in all) the act
of falling in love is an act of regression. The experience of
merging with the loved one has in it echoes from the time when
we were merged with our mothers in infancy…

Falling in love is a trick that our genes pull on
our otherwise perceptive mind to hoodwink or trap us into marriage.

M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled, New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1978, pp. 85,86,87. [173]

When we date, we have the freedom to say, at any
time, ‘This isn’t working out,’ and to end the relationship. The
other person has the same freedom.

What does this mean for the person whose boundaries
have been injured? Often, she brings immature, undeveloped aspects
of her character to an adult romantic situation. In an arena of
low commitment and high risk, she seeks the safety, bonding, and
consistency that her wounds need. She entrusts herself too quickly
to someone whom she is dating because her needs are so intense.
And she will be devastated when things ‘don’t work out.’

This is a little like sending a three-year-old to
the front lines of battle. Dating is a way for adults to find
out about the other’s suitability for marriage; it’s not a place
for young, injured souls to find healing. This healing can best
be found in nonromantic arenas, such as support groups, church
groups, therapy, and same-sex friendships.

Henry Cloud and John Townsend, Boundaries: When to
say Yes, When to say No, to take control of your life, Grand Rapids,
Michigan: Zondervan, 1992, p. 147. [163]

Our sexually immature and hypereroticized society
dictates that we withdraw our physical demonstrations of our love
from our children and teenagers at just that time in their young
lives when they need that energy, the powers of reconciliatory
love, the most… The ability to show love, to talk of love and
shared life energy, has become a casualty of a sexual revolution
that has guaranteed only our freedom to ‘make’ love, not to experience
and share loving. Touching, talking gently and sweetly, hugging,
and kissing have become casualties in the de-sacredization process
of our society.

Romantic physical contact is now seen almost exclusively
as prelude to genital interaction, rather than an intimate and
profound way of connection with those we love the most and the
longest. We have only succeeded in limiting our romantic capacity
to sexual encounters rather than broadening it to tenderness with
those we love as family. The sexual revolution has resulted in
the involution of loving, a narrowing of our ability to show our
caring…

Somewhere between ‘incest’ and being ‘in love’ is
the path of mature family loving that allows intense embracing
and closeness without eroticizing our tenderness.

Paul E. Pearsall The Power of the Family, NY: Doubleday,
1990. p.212. [194]

Courtship is a form of honoring and delighting the
other person, with the hope of winning a loving, accepting response
in return. A man and a woman may show their care and concern for
each other in many ways; by dutifulness, by faithfulness, by offering
comfort. Courtship is simply finding words, gestures, and tokens
to make explicit what those other forms of caring imply.

Thus, courtship often leads to marriage. The tragedy
is that it too often ends there. If one chief purpose of marriage
is to ‘build up communion between persons… and confirm to them
the fact that they are truly loved,’ then clearly courtship has
as much place within marriage as before it. The forms that courtship
takes, like the forms of sexual expression which are regarded
as permissible, will vary according to their cultural setting.
But Christians are more concerned with the love that is conveyed
than with the forms of expression which convey it.

In exquisite theological poetry the Song of Solomon
proclaims that the fiery flashes of love are as a raging flame
- in some translations, a most vehement flame of God. Energized
by the divine eros, human beings were created by God with the
fiery flame of God’s own passion, to love each other as God has
loved us. Our impulse to love each other in right relationship
may include relationships of sexual intimacy, but goes well beyond
them to include a passionate caring for all creation. Instead
of fearing our deep calling to love and be loved, Christians are
invited to embrace eros – embodied in both women and men – and
influence all of our relationships with the deepest feeling and
care.

Presbyterians and Human Sexuality 1991, Published
by the Office of the General Assembly Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.),
Lousiville, KY, pp.30,33. [278]

Eros or erotic love drives us to seek union with
that which can provide fulfillment. It is passion to find, to
experience, to know the other. Filial love is the love of friendship.
It is love in which a mutual life of giving and receiving is present
in an ongoing fashion. It is or should be a strong element in
sexual relationships. Agape should not be seen as one form of
love alongside the other forms, but rather as a love that informs
or infuses those other expressions…. [Agape is] a quality of
self-giving that should ground all other forms of love.

Wilson Yates, ‘Human Sexuality: Dualistic and Holistic
Paradigms’, quoted in Presbyterians and Human Sexuality 1991,
Office of the General Assembly Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), 100
Witherspoon Street Louisville, KY 40202-1396 [103]

Some ways to develop love in a marriage:

1. ‘Count the ways’ you appreciate your partner.
List the good qualities you appreciate. Recite them often. Regularly
begin a prayer with ‘Lord, thanks so much for …. Thank you for
his/her….’

2. Be sensitive to your partner’s vulnerable areas.
Self-esteem problem? Weight/diet/sleeping/sex problem? Think of
creative ways to encourage in these areas.

3. Every day commend your partner for something:
either what they’ve done, or simply who they are. Put your appreciation
into words.

4. Treat your spouse with courtesy and respect. How
would you honour the person you most admire? Well do that for
your partner, who is the most significant VIP in your life!

5. Don’t ever nourish the thought that you could
be happier with someone else. As Billy Graham used to preach:
‘If I felt I was falling out of love with wife, I’d get down on
my knees and stay there until God gave me love for her again!’

6. Listen to your partner’s ideas, feelings, frustrations,
opinions. Try to accommodate to them. If there is an impasse and
the issue is very important, talk to a trusted counselor.

7. Smile at your spouse more than you smile at anyone
else. Gently touch and caress (at times when sexual foreplay is
not on the agenda!). Look into each other’s eyes. Get as physical
in terms of holding hands when walking etc. as you are each comfortable.

8. Occasionally buy a surprise gift – something he
or she likes.

9. A little love-note on your spouse’s pillow, or
in his/her luggage when traveling away from you, is nice.

10. Remember important birthdays and anniversaries,
and plan something special together for those days.

Rowland Croucher

A Jules Feiffer cartoon shows a couple talking about
their relationship. ‘You have contempt for me,’ the woman complains.
‘You treat me as if I’m stupid. You have no interest in my opinions.
When my friends are around you behave as if I’m invisible.’

When the man protests that he loves her, the woman
asks ‘Then why do you act as if you don’t like me?’

‘Who said I liked you?’ the man responds, ‘I just
love you.’

The insightful cartoonist has identified part of
the confusion that many … encounter in their relationships.
Sometimes couples take the time to know and to like each other
before they make love sexually, but often they love first, like
later, and leave relationship building to the end. Is it surprising
that [those] marriages are so often shakey and confusing?

Leonard Cargan, Marriages and Families, New York:
HarperCollins, 1991, p.107. [137]

The feeling that people call love is not what the
Bible means by love at all. According to Scripture, love is not
a feeling; love is a way of acting. True love, as God’s Word tells
us, is a way of treating other people. Love involves two aspects:
doing and enduring. We can understand this better by looking at
Jesus Christ. The life of Christ can be divided into two parts:
his active obedience and his passive obedience. The active obedience
of Jesus was everything he did: Jesus went about doing good. He
healed the sick; he fed the hungry; he forgave the sinner; he
comforted the mourner. Christ’s passive obedience (from which
we get the word passion) involves the things he endured: mockery,
insults, betrayal, injustice, emotional turmoil, sorrow, physical
pain, separation from his heavenly Father. Jesus Christ was the
perfect embodiment of love. Doing good and enduring evil – that
is what love is all about.

James Kennedy, Learning to Live with the People You
Love, Springdale, Pa: Whitaker House, 1987, pp.11,13. [157]

Aristotle’s famous view that if children did not
love their parents and family members, they would love no one
but themselves, is one of the most important statements ever made
about the relation between family and society.

The family permits an individual to develop love
and security – and most important, the capacity to trust others…
In the words of the German ethologist Eibl-Eibesfeldt, ‘The human
community is based on love and trust: and both are evolved through
the family’…

Emile Durkheim was one classical social theorist
who has argued that, at its core, every human society is a moral
community; conversely… in the absence of shared moral values,
a society must begin to disintegrate… The reason for this is
simple: In the absence of moral consensus, coercion remains the
only instrument for the maintenance of even minimal social integration.

Brigitte & Peter Berger, ‘The War Over the Family’,
New York: Anchor Press, 1983, quoted in The Australian Family,
Vol 13, No. 1, March 1992, pp.3,5. [140]

Up until 1937 I was stateless… up to the age of
15 life had been very hard, we had no common roof and I was at
boarding school which was rough and violent. All the members of
my family lived in different corners of Paris. It was only when
I was about 14 that we all gathered under a common roof and that
was real happiness and bliss – it is odd to think that in a suburban
house in Paris one could discover perfect happiness but it was
so. This was the first time that we had had a home since the revolution.
But before that I ought to say that I had met something which
puzzled me a great deal. I was sent to a boy’s summer camp when
I was about eleven years old and there I met a priest who must
have been about thirty. Something about him struck me – he had
love to spare for everyone and his love wasn’t conditioned by
whether we were good and it never changed when we were bad. It
was an unconditional ability to love. I had never met this in
my life before. I had been loved at home, but I found it natural.
I had friends too and that was natural, but I had never met this
kind of love. At the time I didn’t trace it to anything, I just
found this man extremely puzzling and extremely lovable. Only
years later, when I had already discovered the Gospel, did it
occur to me that he loved with a love that was beyond him. He
shared out divine love to us, or if you prefer, his human love
was of such depth, and had such scope and scale that he could
include all of us, either through joy or pain, but still within
one love. This experience I think was the first deep spiritual
experience I had.

Archbishop Anthony Bloom, School for Prayer, London:
Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd, 1971, pp x-xi. [316]

I love you, Not only for what you are, But for what
I am When I am with you.

I love you, Not only for what You have made of yourself,
But for what You are making of me.

I love you, For the part of me That you bring out;
I love you For putting your hand Into my heaped-up heart And passing
over All the foolish, weak things That you can’t help Dimly seeing
there, And for drawing out Into the light All the beautiful belongings
That no one else had looked Quite far enough to find.

I love you because you Are helping me to make Of
the lumber of my life Not a tavern But a temple; Out of the works
Of my every day Not a reproach But a song…

I love you.

Author unknown.

…..

Lord, you who make bald heads, but above all beautiful
lives, You, the divine Attentive One, the divine Patient One the
divine Present One, See that at no time I forget your presence.
I don’t ask you to bless what I myself have decided to do, but
give me the grace to discover and to live what you have dreamed
for me. Lord, living in your grace, let me share a little, through
the attention I give to others, your loving care for us. Let me,
on my knees, adore in them the mystery of your creative love.
Let me respect your idea of them without trying to impose my own.
May I allow them to follow the path that you have marked out for
them without trying to take them along mine. May I realize that
they are indispensable to the world, and that I can’t do without
the least among them. May I never tire of looking at them and
of enriching myself with the treasures you have entrusted to them.
Help me to praise you in their journeying, to find you in their
lives.

Michael Quoist, Prayers of Life, Dublin: Gill and
Son, 1963, p.71. [187]

…..

Lord, you do not love us because you find us wonderfully
attractive. You do not love us because we are beautiful or kind
or religious. You love us because ‘God is love’.

Jesus, when you died on the cross, in some mysterious
way you ‘paid the price’ to demonstrate your love for us, and
to save us from lovelessness. No one can have any greater love
than to lay down their life for another. So yours is a love that
pays a costly price, that is sacrificial. You loved me and gave
yourself for me. You still love me and give yourself to me.

So, Lord, help us to love one another like this.
Amen.

A Benediction

May the loving God work his will in your heart so
that you may become more like him, Drawing a circle that includes
others rather than excluding them, Loving those you like and those
you do not like, Appreciating the image of God in every person
in your family and in the human family. Amen.

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