There are two Sacraments of service that are directed to the salvation of others and the building up of God’s Kingdom. The priestly vocation and by extension, a religious calling are both expressions of the one and the same loving service. In the past, the priestly cloth and the religious habit were deemed to represent a higher calling but today, love within the context of marriage between a man and woman is considered on equal footing. The service of love is spoken of in terms of Christ’s glory and how He would give glory to the Father.
Everyone is familiar with love but what it is exactly, is not easy to pin down. The word itself is used rather loosely to mean anything when essentially, love is a virtue. It is an action and a commitment to a set of behaviour that is intended to benefit others. Sadly, the over-sentimentalisation of love has narrowed our focus more on feelings rather than on love as a choice. Love is highlyromanticised.
Love has to be more than feeling because it is a matter of willing. It is a desire to love others, even more than oneself. Therefore, it is a way of being and behaving. I remember in a class in my first year of philosophy, there was a discussion on love. The professor defined love through definitive actions. “I love by not killing”. “I love by reaching out to others”. “I love by taking care of the poor”. In other words, love does not reside in the generic but rather in the specific actions we carry out. To love, we need to draw boundaries and this is the part where we may fail to appreciate. Love cannot be anything can because it is not licentious.
I was talking to an altar server about his fellow servers and what has happened to them. I named one and remarked that I was happy that this ex-server was still attending Mass regularly. This astute young man replied pointedly that the situation is rather sad for me to be contented that one ex-server still going to Church. Then he said something else, “I have come to realise that in whatever I want to say about the Church, in my behaviour, there must be obedience”. I was impressed immensely by this young man.
Love is obedient. It has to be which is why we draw boundaries so that we can behave in a particular manner. Contrast love with lust. Lust knows no boundaries. Moreover, the idea of a celebrity screaming “I love you” rings hollow at best or at worst, they are empty platitudes. How many of our movie stars have had their hand dirtied in loving the underprivileged or the poor? Many of them are just happy to lecture us on the virtue of ecological responsibility while whizzing around in their carbon-emitting private jets.
Without a doubt, love has an emotional component to it. It is feelings but it is also more. Pope Benedict brilliantly illustrated this in “Deus caritas est” (God is love). Love is both emotion and reason. Emotion is beyond us and it imposes itself uninvited. Those of us who feel angry and cannot control the anger know the experience of being out of control. But love is also reasonable because it involves choice and action. We can choose to behave in a particular way.
If love were merely emotion, it cannot fully satisfy. Why? It drives a person from one thing to another. Ask anyone who is an addict and he or she will tell you that they are driven and the worst part of it, they are never fulfilled. In fact, the more “feeling” or emotional love is, the more exhausted, unfulfilled and depressed we will be. But when we introduce love as both choice and action, then emotions can be purified.
When Jesus spoke of the love that lays down its life for others, it is in reference to one’s self-fulfilment. It does not feel like it but you speak to anyone who has loved without self-preservation, they can tell you that they find themselves most when they have given themselves to others. That is the power of self-sacrifice.
Love one another as I have loved you. In the Catholic context, this commandment is exemplified in the two Sacraments of Service—Holy Orders and Matrimony. In the case of marriage, how best to love if not through a spouse?
Some of you who are married must be sitting next to your spouse, whom you barely tolerate but for some reasons have learnt to live and let live. Fair enough. There are some who might feel that they have no choice but to stay on in a marriage because it is too late.
But when you first got married, did any one of you enter into marriage and in your mind there was a proviso that it would not last forever? Even in the most desperate case of a marriage, when a person walks down the aisle, he or she does so believing that this is the first and the last. Otherwise why do it?
Marriage itself provides us with an answer of what it means to truly love and to sacrifice in love. The many failures in marriage are not proofs that love is not a calling to sacrifice. It is precisely when a partner enters into marriage thinking of himself or herself that the marriage will soon fall apart.
Think of Ephesians chapter 5. A man is the typology of Christ Himself. A woman is the symbol of the Church. When we read this we often hear the spiel that wife should obey her husband. In a feminine-sensitive culture, this is a definite no-no, right? How antiquated to urge a woman to obey her husband? Many fail to hear what St Paul, the so-called misogynist, taught about marriage’s sacrifice. The man is supposed to sacrifice himself as Christ sacrificed Himself for the Church. If a man wants an obedient and dutiful wife, he must be the first to lay down his life for her. Therein lies the equality of self-sacrifice. There is as much to sacrifice from both parties and when each spouse is ready to lay down his or her life out of love for the other, the marriage will flourish.
Finally, emotions or feelings are therapeutic but that is not the goal of love. Imagine Jesus issuing the commandment to love. None of the martyrs submitted to deaths because Jesus imposed upon them this duty. Instead they courageously embraced death because they loved Him and had surrendered their hearts to Him. The drive to obey Him is deeper than feelings and more than a duty. Ultimately the ability to embrace the commandment comes from a heart that has fallen in love with Jesus Christ. The only way we can ever love like Jesus,forgive like Jesus and die like Jesus is to keep close to Him, to be taken up by Him, to be graced by His Spirit because He is love. Mother Teresa herself when asked about her tender behaviour towards a leper said, “I would not do it. But I do it only because I love Jesus”. Without love for Jesus, sacrifice will feel odious and burdensome. Only love for Jesus will make the yoke easy and the burden light.
