The Thing About Love

A girl in her mid-twenties and a boy of the same age are seated beside each other, sitting before an altar of God, inside a church that is presently without anyone else but themselves. They hold hands and speak in whispers. The sun falls slowly outside and the world prepares to sleep. There are no lit candles anywhere inside the church.


Girl: Do you love me?

Boy: Yes, you know I do.

Girl: How come you never say so.

Boy: ... I thought I just did.



The girl lets go of the boy's hand. She keeps hers laid on her lap. Her head bows down. She lets it hang. She looks as though dreaming.


Boy: Do you love me?

Girl: Of course, I do.

Boy: How come you never say so.

Girl: I love you. There. So easy to say.


The boy looks away and lets his eyes fall there, and then here, and then again there, and his mind remembers a scene from childhood but he doesn't understand how it came to him at that moment, and he feels saddened in his heart, as though he were an astronaut left behind in space, and the world can no more be seen, and left, right, straight, back are the same.

Celebrated psychiatrist and author, M. Scott Peck notes that one of the greatest sources of unnecessary pain for most people is their inability to distinguish among the different forms of love. Indeed, there are as many kinds as there are people who have ever used the word in describing their feelings for another. Even Pope Benedict XVI says this when he divided love into three kinds in his first papal encyclical, Deus Caritas Est.

There is eros or the kind of love in which we say, "I need you to love me; you've got to love me!" Then there is philia, or the kind that friends have and with which they say, "I love you, but we don't have to be together all the time, okay." And the highest which St. Paul often used in his letters to talk about the love of Christ, agape, which is the love we have when we mean: "I love you, and so I will serve you."

The pope says that although these three kinds of love are so human and necessary in the different times and situtations of our lives, the goal of the person who loves another is to bring his or her love to the level of the agape. This makes love, for many people, a difficult thing to do. And so many stay on the level of eros and philia. These are the kinds of love that are sung about in so many of the love songs we hear on the radio or thru our MP3s. "I can't live without you... without your love I will die... My love makes no demands, love me whenever you wish."

But love, real love, the kind that God Himself has shown us does make a demand. Agape is the kind of love whereby the one loving another is saying "I choose to love you; it's my will to love you." The demand is upon myself.

Love in this way carries the power of action, commitment, fidelity, devotion, and care. It is the love that is demonstrated, proven by the giving of time and service to the one who is loved. This kind of love springs from the overflow of self-worth on the part of the one who loves. He/she is able to love another because there is so much love from deep inside. It is the only kind of love that is meant in the marriage vows of "to love and to hold, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, 'til death do us part."

Sadly, though... how many couples tie themselves in marriage with only eros or philia in their hearts.