HOLY HOMEWORK

The Language of Love

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Traveling abroad? Some studies suggest that we can express our basic needs in any foreign tongue if we know as few as 500 root words along with some fundamental rules of grammar. According to the Guinness Book of Records, the Greeks command the richest verbal communication skills in the world because they have more words than any other language: 5 million, plus 70 million derivatives. English has only a smidgen over 1,025,000 words! Why? Perhaps our vocabulary is undersized because we use the same word to mean many different things.

All You Need Is Love

For example, in English we use the one word, love, in reference to everything from people to pets and ice cream to art. The Greeks begin their exploration of what love means with at least seven different words. We can almost intuit their fine distinctions at first glance. Éros (erotic, passionate love), philía (brotherly love, as in the city named Philadelphia), mania (insane, frenzied, possessive love), ludus (avoiding commitment, playful love), pragma (logical, making compromises, practical love), storgê (developing slowly, stable love), and agápe (altruistic, selfless love). This last entry mirrors the definition by St. Thomas Aquinas: willing the good of another, which moves the concept of love away from an emotion and closer to a choice.

Interestingly though, a computer search in English for the definition of the word love yields over 600 million hits which implies either a lot of love, or a lot of repetition, or a lot of confusion. And our marketing campaigns don't make it any easier for us to understand this four-letter word.

From Christmas to Valentines

Since Dec. 26, and on many store shelves, we've been looking at chocolate-filled treats arranged in red, heart-shaped gift boxes. Like the commercialization of Christmas, poor Valentine's Day has fallen victim to the transfer of heart-felt loving into heart-filled gifting. Vendors have taken financial advantage of flowers, jewelry, greeting cards and candy by turning them into expressions of so-called real love. But real love, as Aquinas declares, is an act of the will. In other words, authentic love is expressed by a decision about how we are going to treat others; by our behavior toward them.

Dead Declarations Versus Living Manifestations

If our hearts simply sat in our chest cavities and did nothing, we would die. The same is true of our love. Yes, the words and the emotions and the tokens of affection expressed on Feb. 14 are significant symbols. But they are dead if they are void of love in action. After all, what are we really celebrating on Valentine's Day? Hopefully, we are professing true love. What is true love? It is not empty calories, clever words, expensive gems, or even passionate kisses. Love, if it is true, must always, ultimately, manifest itself in behavior. If a spouse says, “I love you” but refuses to empty the dishwasher, the couple experiences an immediate disconnect between a declaration of love and a manifestation of love.

God's Spirited Love

The Bible assures us that our Heavenly Father is eager to mercifully forgive our sins and fill us with grace. How so? The prophet Ezekiel reveals this promise to us when God says, “I will remove from your chest your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you… (Ez. 36:26).

When God puts his spirit of love inside us, we are receiving the same energy and strength that supported each footstep of Christ in his painful, loving struggle to Calvary. Christ decided to die for us out of love for us. So when we say we truly love others, we are deciding to suffer for their good; to give up our lives for them. We may need 500 words to navigate a foreign land but we only need one word to follow the path of Christ. And that one word is love.

For Holy Homework:

Regardless of the 1,025,000 plus words in the English language, what is our personal definition of this one word, love? During the month of February and in a conspicuous location like the top of our computer screen, the bathroom mirror or the refrigerator door, let's place a Post-it Note with L-O-V-E written on it. This note can serve as a daily reminder of how we define love and how closely we've come to: Willing the Good of Another.

Comments can be sent to: FatherBobPagliari@Yahoo.com