What is Love?

First and foremost: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpN60KKBAjc

Love. I believe that there are two levels of love. There is the basic love that can be applied to pizza, kazoos, unicycles, pan flutes, football, sleeping, your parents, friends, and spouse. But this type of love is not enough to carry on a commitment that will last throughout a lifetime. This type of love has a greater chance of leading to false love. I think that a false love would be something like a guilty pleasure. The best that I can define “false love” as is through example. It is something that leads to self-absorbtion and doesn’t complete the person or lead to something that is greater than themselves. An example might be infatuations, obsessions, pornography, alcohol, etc. This type of love lacks one (or more) of the following three things: intimacy, sacrifice, and commitment. These three things are the foundational building blocks of romantic love. If we can define the necessary parts of love (intimacy, sacrifice, and commitment) then we can more accurately define love itself.

There are three vocations: priesthood (included is sister-hood, brothers, deacons, and any other religious life), the devoted single life, and the married life. All three of these require the three elements of love in order to be happy. And this is where romantic love comes into play.

Romantic love fulfills those three things completely. If one is lacking from the beginning of a relationship then that true companionship, relationship, marriage, etc. will likely crumble. It can be restored but that greatly depends on the situation.

Now, what is intimacy, sacrifice, and commitment?

Intimacy, I believe extends past physical contact. Intimacy is a true yearning to be with a person for who they are and not what they look like. This romantic type of love has no basis in physical attraction because your experiences for said person outweighs any physical feature. Intimacy is an attraction to a person because of their vulnerability to you with the trust that they will not be misused. (Thank you Lauren Kissel for your impeccable timing of input) The priest has an intimate relationship with the Sacraments, Church, and the Eucharist. The single life has an intimate relationship with his/her community. The married life, obviously has an intimate relationship with their spouse and children.

Sacrifice is the willingness to replace desires of your personal will with the priority of the relationship. It is also the inclination to have a give and take relationship in which the giving or the taking leads to something more than the individual in the relationship whether it is the Church, the community, or the couple’s children. There are clear needs that must be met in all three vocations and sacrifice is what allows for those goals to be met.

Commitment is passion for the person of affection. If a person is committed then their partner is the highest priority to them. This being said, it is the husband/wife’s job to be committed in getting their spouse to Heaven. Heaven is the ultimate goal. Why? Because Heaven/God is the ultimate form of love. Without Him love does not exist. As stated above, God is love. Commitment is the desire to bring their spouse into complete unity and fullness, which is in God. The priest is committed to his Church. (Fun fact: if within the parish that the priest is serving if one of his parishioners dies and goes to hell then that rests on the priest’s shoulders so he better be committed to getting his flock to Heaven) The single is committed to his/her community. And the spouse is committed to his/her one love and must remain celibate from the other 6.8 billion people except for him/her.

With this all being said, I think that, yes there is a One True Love out there for every person. If God is all-good then He wants nothing but the best for us and will constantly be helping and aiding us to him/her. But there is a catch, we have free-will and are fully capable of not listening to Him and His divine plan. If this is the case then we probably won’t find the winner. But if we are consistently receiving the Sacraments and abiding by the policy of love then God will make it happen because He wants nothing more for us than happiness and for us to be reunited fully with Him by way of man or woman. I do think that there are many people that we are compatible with and that we can make perfectly awesome marriages with but the One True Love will best be able to lead us to God. The saying that “God writes straight with a crooked line” is perfectly applicable here. If I marry my not One True Love then He still desires happiness in my life and will find away to bring me back on track. Anyways, I digress.

Above all, love is a CHOICE--not a feeling. God is love. God chose to create. Because God is love He expects us to love, which means that we must choose God in order to love. In all of our relationships, God must be the forefront/foundation. Feelings and emotions change, that is our nature. Feelings for another person may very well change but love is not a feeling; love is a choice, therefore one cannot fall out of love unless one chooses to. If love is a choice then intimacy, sacrifice, and commitment are also choices. If any of these decisions begin to whither then love begins to become less prominent. Without intimacy, sacrifice, or commitment one can still choose to love but it CANNOT be true romantic love and will often lead to false love.

It is my conclusion that true romantic love is a commitment to your spouse that is like no other commitment for any other human being. Love is the willingness and enthusiasm to sacrifice your own desires for that of which will further your relationship with your spouse and children. Love is intimacy that is based around complete openness and passion for the company of the other. Above all, God created us in love for love. Our sole (and soul) purpose is to love but given that we have freewill, love is a constant choice. Love is not selfish, hurtful, undevout, or a feeling. Love always leads to a greater cause whether it is your husband/wife, your children, your community, your parish, or whatever. But these causes that lie outside of your own personal boundaries all lead to God.

The purpose of dating is to discover the person who can best propel you to true Happiness, aka God. To do this, it is my belief that intimacy, sacrifice, and commitment must be present in all three of the vocations. So in essence, dating is a process of discernment of each vocation. Dating another person is the discernment to see if he/she has the necessary qualities and levels of intimacy, sacrifice, and commitment. The ultimate ends to dating/discernment will lead to ordination, marriage, or a devoted life to God and community. Dating is a test run of the three qualities of love in order to best find where God is calling you to ultimate happiness in this life.

The issue of homosexuality has come to my attention. I will address this in a civil manner. Allow me to preface this by saying that I have absolutely no problems with gays. However, God created man for woman and woman for man. That is what is natural. I do think that two men can be completely happy together. But like I said two sentences ago, God made man for woman and woman for man. I do not believe that a gay will find his One True Love in another man but that is not to say that that man will not bring him closer to God or more joy to his life.

I am NOT Josh Matthews.

The trouble with the world these days is that it’s inhabitants, the rational ones at least,  struggle to define what a thing is. Allow me to present this problem to you in a more simplified way:

If somebody were to ask you, “Who/what is Josh Matthews?”

I would expect to hear answers like these:
- he is an idiot
- he is a human being
- he is a philosophy/psychology major
- he sucks with girls
- he likes to hear himself talk
- he is Catholic
- he is a red head
- he is an intellectual

It wouldn’t surprise me to hear many qualities of Josh Matthews. But I am coming ever so close to the conclusion that I am not just Josh Matthews. If you define me by who or what I am then you are doing me an injustice. Likewise, if I were to define you by my experiences with you or even the qualities that you actually do possess then I am not adequately describing your essence and I am being unfair to myself as well. Let us put this example into practical use:

Place yourself in the 1950’s for a moment. Imagine you are an average white male of the times and if I were to ask you what/who is De’shawn Williams then I would reckon that your answer would be that of a typical white male, “A nigger.” This wasn’t so uncommon, as you know. My argument is that if we merely define a man by his skin color then we define ourselves also by skin color. So not only are you degrading De'shawn's worth but you are also claiming that you are no more than a white person. Skin color, in this case, becomes the essence of De’shawn and your own being. You have limited De'shawn and yourself.

Same goes for 1943 Auschwitz, Poland. If I were to ask you who Anne Frank was, I would assume that your reply would be, “A jew.” If this is the case you are limiting Anne to her religious affiliation. By doing so you are disregarding any other quality in which she might possess. You would also be limiting yourself to your own religion.

The above problems manifest themselves in many arenas of today’s society as well: homosexuality, government employees, religion, Middle Easterners, and other prejudices that we might have.

I ask myself, what is it that we should do about this problem. What is the answer to  “Who/what is Josh Matthews?” How can we accurately define a person? If we cannot merely limit a person to his/her particulars then how can we tell somebody who another person is? We can tell them what our personal experiences with this person have been like but we cannot claim that these personal experiences are generalizations for how the person always behaves.

These are problems that I am not sure how to address but I do know that these are definitely problems.  I am definitely open to suggestions or rebuttals.