A man who does not love is not a man, but a selfish, vile being, led by his passions and dazzled by his own excellence.
Therefore, it is very important to know what love is. The task is not simple. It is easy to err when talking about love, as it is a word with multiple and extremely different meanings. Moreover, the fact that the modern world is based upon a deviant form of love does not help us to understand the greatness and value of this noble reality.
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
A man who does not love is not a man, but a selfish, vile being, led by his passions and dazzled by his own excellence.
Therefore, it is very important to know what love is. The task is not simple. It is easy to err when talking about love, as it is a word with multiple and extremely different meanings. Moreover, the fact that the modern world is based upon a deviant form of love does not help us to understand the greatness and value of this noble reality.
In order to see clearly into this labyrinth of love, let us go back to the most indisputable realities concerning man, who does not have (as the angels have) a simple nature. Man is, on the contrary, a complex and fragile being, composed of a body weighing him down and a rational soul. His basic fragility demands that he live in the company of others and maintain harmonious relations with those around him. Philosophy, following Aristotle, summarizes this in a concise and deep formula, proclaiming that man is "a rational and social animal".
We hasten to make clear that in saying that man is an "animal" we do not mean he is a beast, only that he has a body animated by the "breath of life" (anima, the soul). Love is a spiritual reality which requires a soul capable of making free choices - a capacity completely lacking in the animal deprived of intelligence and will. On the other hand, having a spiritual soul, endowed with the two spiritual faculties of intelligence and will, man can love.
The first form of love that one finds is, however, still very dependent on the senses. We have a marvelous testimony of this in the discovery - thanks to an extraordinary technological development - that the new-born infant recognizes his father among other men. His small being, indeed, vibrates differently to the sound of this beloved voice, well known from having often been heard echoing in the maternal womb.
But isn't it an exaggeration to talk of love regarding these simple, infantile vibrations? We do not think so. This small child is not only flesh and bone, he has a soul that reacts with what is, admittedly, a still extremely rudimentary mode of expression. But in the inclination that carries him towards his father there already appears a filial affection which will increase as the child becomes aware of the strength of paternal tenderness and as the strong bonds between them develop.
Love is, indeed, in strict dependence on the knowledge which we have of the beings and things that surround us. If love is without question a faculty of the will, no one can love if he does not use his intelligence, even minimally, as in the case of our infant. The act of the will requires a previous act of the intelligence. It is absolutely impossible to love or to hate what we do not know... or what we have ceased to know!
Intelligence and will are two faculties closely related and which work together. The will cannot be exercised until after the intelligence presents it with an object. The will, in turn, makes it possible for the intelligence to penetrate more deeply into reality and thus to understand better the world that surrounds it.
Consequently, the concept of "blind love" is nonsense: love, far from blinding us, helps us to know better what we love. True love develops our intelligence, strengthens our will and weaves bonds of harmonious affection between the beings that know and love each other; bonds stronger than death, essential to those who want to be faithful to their human nature. "Blind love", on the other hand, is not true love, but a contradiction in terms. Few see that behind this popular expression hides a sensual passion that takes man away from reality by locking him into a sad and vain search for himself.
We touch here the perversion of the modern world, which proposes an immediate and intense but polluted "love". Its intensity is simply from the senses. It is the most complete form of drunkenness because it stupefies the soul and sterilizes its powers. Man is not able to think and to will, he is entirely under the influence of the senses and enslaved by their increasingly tyrannical requirements. Man becomes unable to choose, to make a human act, to give up what is immediate, the fascination of the moment, the dazzle of creatures, unable to offer sacrifice and to sacrifice himself. The soul is bogged down in a vain search for itself, in a subtle and mortal form of selfishness. For this reason we affirm that a man who cannot love is not a man: he is not able to answer to the Love of God for us, that love that He daily manifests to us in the thousand and one details of life, hoping that we will be able to find Him there and to love Him.
Today, love is so vulgarized that it no longer means anything. It is nothing but an empty cream puff offered to anyone with a passing fancy for something sweet. It is not what it should be: the path that takes us to God and by which God Himself leads us!
Let us follow the advice of Saint Augustine: "Ama et fac quod vis", "Love and do what you will". Let us truly love by intelligently doing the will of He Who loves us. And then, faithful to our fundamental vocation, we will become saints.
In Christo sacerdote et Maria,
Fr. Yves le Roux