Love is assumed to be cheesy…we forget that love is so much more than that
Scott Peck: “I define love thus: ==The will to expand one’s self for the purpose of nurturing others==”
St. Thomas Aquinas: Love is to ==will the good of the other== as other
Love is an act of the will
Love = (willing the) Good
Good = think about flourishing; benefit
The Paschal Nature of Love(John Haughey, SJ)
Paschal: Passion, Death, and Ressurection of Christ
both of these acts require the self
Dying from self-absorption → realizing there is more to life than the self
Rising to self-donation → now you need to give yourself to somebody who needs; your purpose is to go beyond the confines of yourself to do something meaningful to somebody else
If you give a gift that isn’t valuable…it isn’t a gift.
You’re just throwing out trash
When you give yourself to other people, do you value that part of yourself?
Love as a “panacea” (Bishop Robert Barron sermon; February 5, 2020)
Panacea: miracle medicine; cures everything
There is no such thing as a panacea…but perhaps the closest thing is exercise
Self-care; therapy; medicine
We only really start invoking these things when we see that something is wrong
We cannot take a purely ==curative== approach when it comes to our mental health
No amount of solutions is enough to cure what ==ails us from within==
Think of love as the exercise that your soul needs
Despite its benefits, it always comes with certain risks
If you don’t put your body at the risk of vulnerability, it will not get stronger. Same applies to the soul
Love heals and strengthens one’s soul just as exercise heals and strengthens one’s body
Antifragilty(conceptualized by Taleb; applied to psychology by Haidt)
Examples
Wine glasses are fragile; damaged by disorder
Plastic containers are resilient; unaffected by disorder
Muscles are antifragile; strengthened by disorder
Definition: ==the capacity to thrive due to shocks, stressors, volatility, uncertainities, and difficulties==
Johnn A. Shedd: “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for”
Practical advice: Do an act of love to someone regularly no matter how small.
Problem: We love in blindly passionate ways.
Passion leads; impulsive; reactive -> harmful
Louie’s biking incident
“I was pushing too hard without the necessary warm-up”
“Once I recovered, I went biking again and felt stronger”
Make sure that the intensity of love is accompanied by the wisdom of Cards/Discernment (Love wisely)
What does this person need?
Is what they’re asking from me good?
Am I able to give it?
Maybe…to a certain extent
Jesus giving his life wasn’t an impulse decision. He was discerning his own life…and eventually saw that this was the only way to go
Louie: “Hindi sapat ang magmahal nang todo; kailangan mo rin magmahal nang tama.”
4 Points About the Dynamics of Love
Love is not something we lose
We tend to think of it in economic terms
Something we gain/lose
Love as a transaction
Do we ever run out of love?
We may get tired of loving, but we never lose the capacity to love
Love is not a commodity, but a capacity
Otherwise, we’ll be very transcational about it
Love is circular
Is there an inverse relationship between loving yourself and loving other people? (What is the relationship?)
The Circular Nature of Love (St. Thomas Aquinas): Loving others finds its ==strength== in self-love, and self-love finds its fulfillment in loving others
Athlete analogy: Self-love is training; loving others is competing
Self-love & loving others has a circular relationship
Love is what makes us truly human(Homo amans)
Sapiens: wisdom, competence, ingenuity
We are getting smarter, but also so much more broken
Why do we associate terrible human beings with animals?
With our increasing competence comes increasing cruelty.
Bishop Paolo Virgilio David’s speech:
We survived and dominated the world because of our big hearts
It’s never too late to return to God’s eternal design, identifying ourselves as Homo Amans (The Loving Humankind)
The world is not broken because of a lack of competence, but because of a ==lack of compassion==
Love is not for the faint of heart
What is my purpose? To love.
What is the best way to love in this life?
In what way can I gift myself in this dysfunctional world?
Find your unique way of loving. That’s a vocation.
What are you being called to?
“I don’t think I can do it”
Money and personal happiness can follow if your heart is in the right place
“Perhaps the best definition of revelation is that it is ==safe to love==. The walls of our anxiety, our anguish, our narrowness are broken down and a wide endless horizon is known.”