Even the perfectly good Greek word eros becomes the adjective "erotic" and erotic becomes synonymous with sex, despite having an original meaning that goes beyond mere physical pleasure. As I write, the title of a Walker Percy novel occurs to me: Love in the Ruins.
Additionally, Valentine's day, like all other such days, become an occasion to spend money. For this day, money is dropped on chocolates, flowers, jewelry, lavish meals, and so-called "intimate apparel." Ads frequently consist of some variation of "show how much you love her by buying..." This despite the fact that Saint Valentine was a martyr. These days don't seem to require a rationale. Most people know little and care even less about some remote figure named Valentine. The same goes for the person in whose honor the next like-minded holiday is named after: Saint Patrick.
Did you know Saint Valentine is also the patron saint for people afflicted with epilepsy, and of beekeepers?
Saint Valentine relic in the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome, photo by Dnalor 01 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0.
As long-time readers know, I feel much the same way about the secular Christmas season that run parallel with the liturgical season of Advent and seeks to do away with the actual season of Christmas. This has nothing to do with me being opposed to enjoyment, fun, or celebration. I am in favor of all three. It just think when the roots of what is celebrated are lost, the metaphorical tree slowly dies. This dying has a profound impact on culture and, through culture, on society.
In the Song of Songs we read "love is as strong as death" (8:6). In and through Jesus Christ, love conquered death. This conquest shows that love is not merely as strong as death but that love is stronger than death. For a Christian, like Saint Valentine, this is everything!
In John 15:15 Jesus calls his disciples (there are not apostles in John's Gospel) philous, that is, friends. With eros, philia is another Greek word for love. Philia is friendship. For Aristotle, friendship was love's highest form. Elsewhere in the Johannine corpus, however, we read twice in the space of eight verses that "God is love" (see 1 John 4:8-16). Agape is the Greek word for love in this passage.
Agape refers to self-giving, self-sacrificing, self-emptying (kenotic) love. For Christians, therefore, agape is the highest form of love. It is important to note that "God is love" is not logically reversible. The inverse property of multiplication, which holds that 5x4=20 and 4x5=20, doesn't apply. Love is not God. God is love.
Agape does not obliterate or conquer eros and/or philia. Rather, agape enfolds them and deepens them. Dare I say agape "sanctifies" the other forms of love? When considered in a Christian way, because it is a sacramental sign of Christ's love for His Bride, the Church (errant spouse she may sometimes be), Christian marriages should show this. After all, sacraments are visible and tangible signs of Christ's presence in and for the world, n'est ce pas?
Any saint's day or, as with today, any saints' day, is a celebration of the God who is love and of the friendship we have with God through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Understanding God as a Trinity of divine persons implies God is love. What is the Holy Spirit if not the love between the Father and the Son personified? This, in a nutshell, is why I am an unabashed double processionist. To be baptized is to be immersed, plunged, into the life of God.
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Since love is today's theme, it is fitting to mention the recently revived ordo amoris. I have been more than a little bemused reading several criticisms of the Holy Father's letter to the U.S. bishops with regard to his treatment of the ordo amoris. The ordo amoris was brought into recent public discourse by the Vice President. He seems to have invoked is as a justification for a lot what the present administration is doing (or seeking to no longer do) with regard to immigration and foreign aid. In any case, these criticisms were basically how the Pontiff got Saint Augustine's theology wrong.
In his letter, I don't think Pope was attempting a precise theological exposition of Saint Augustine's ordo amoris. To me, he seems to attempt something of a corrective to it, at least to a lazy use of it in a political and self-justifying way. His corrective is an appeal directly to the teaching of Jesus Christ to whom, apart perhaps from the just love of self (which is maybe the cornerstone of the ordo amoris properly understood), as in "love your neighbor as yourself," such a construct would be foreign.
Specifically, the Holy Father points to the parable of the Good Samaritan, which was told in response to the question "Who is my neighbor?" He noted:
The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the "Good Samaritan" (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception" (Letter of the Holy Father to the Bishops of the United States of America, sec. 6)Without a doubt, what Jesus teaches is hard to live, which is why a lot of theological effort is put into explaining it away, reducing His teaching to nothing but our own status quo in which conversion is neither desired nor needed. It is of this essence of Christianity to overcome an us-vs-them view of things.
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Loving is difficult for many reasons, not least among which is that it requires understanding. It certainly requires understanding who is my neighbor. As the same passage from 1 John, cited above, notes, we can love because we have first been loved. Hence, I am to love in the same way Christ loves me. The love of Christ is an experience, the result of an encounter (see the first section of Pope Benedict XVI's first encylical letter, Deus caritas est, which letter also contains a wonderful exposition on eros, philia, and agape).
Our Friday traditio is HoJo asking "What Is Love?"
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