Understanding love at its core

By admin · Saturday, July 17th, 2010

When asked to provide an answer to the question “What is Love?” what comes to mind, almost instinctively, is the definition of God given by the Apostle Saint John in his First Epistle, “God is Love” (4:16.) But does this mean that God and “love” are two realities so closely linked that we cannot define one without making reference to the other? Here is a reflection on some fundamental issues associated with the question “What is Love?”

Any discourse on “love” would be incomplete without an examination of the connection that exists between the reality of “love” and God. For “love” reveals the existence of God and the existence of God is the source of all “love.”

In this article I seek to provide an answer to the question “What is Love?” indirectly by concentrating on some of the philosophical grounds in support of the argument that the experience of God’s love manifests the existence of God.

The starting observation is the simple fact that in human beings there exists a faculty whereby man is capable of performing acts of love. From this observation, men’s capacity for metaphysical inquiry raises the question of the origin of the human will: How can we explain the fact that we are born with the ability to love?

Over and above whichever way we may choose to understand the origin of the human will, the principle that “one cannot give to another what one does not possess oneself” rules. The source that grants to us the faculty of the will must possess as well that capacity, otherwise it wouldn’t be able to communicate it to us. But when the power of giving and the power of loving are present in the same source, can there truly be a gift without love? Giving is, by definition, the essence of love and giving without love is not giving at all.

Out of the superabundance of his love, God, as the giver of all gifts, creates us with the ability to love. From our part, we, as receivers of the gift, possess the ability to love as fiber of our being.

Indeed, to possess the ability to love in one’s will is already the first experience of God’s love. Every time God grants the faculty of the will to a human being, God exercises an act of love and the recipient of the will experiences God’s love in his internal entitative constitution.

In some souls the spark of love shines with admirable intensity. But, in fact, in every single soul one finds the spark of love present to some degree.

Now, “that which is” by participation leads to “that which is” by essence as to a first. Thus, from the observation of the different degrees of love in all those who are graced with the spark of love, there follows that there must be at the summit someone who is the fullness of love and the cause of the ability to love human beings possess. This highest cause is known to all under the name of God.

The faculty of the will is a God-given gift that human beings have in order to love. And we should love first the one who has given us this capacity. Not without reason the First Commandment of the Decalogue “Love God above all things,” is said to be inscribed in our hearts.

In conclusion, then, those who acknowledge that love comes from the will and that the will comes from God, have no difficulty in seeing that “love” implies God and that God implies “love.” There can be no true “love” without God: that is love at its core, because “God is Love.”

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