Love as Delight

The essence, the heart, the form of Love is Delight. Love is one...it is Delight...but it is also manifold, rich, expansive. It is also: gratitude, trust, respect, attraction, donation,companionship,fruitfulness and care. These eight moments are suggestive rather than exclusive or conclusive but entail the filial (gratitude, trust, respect), the companionable (companionship), the spousal (attraction, donation) and the generative (fruitfulness and care.)Every particular love is singular and distinctive: it flows from delight but gathers these eight moments into a unique gestalt. Delight here is understood as communion...intellectual, volitional and emotional...with the other in approval and celebration. The mysterious, profound, radiant "goodness" of the beloved is received, experienced, internalized, proclaimed and enhanced...the beloved is "glorified." The filial structure of gratitude is fundamental: the beloved is manifest to the lover unexpectedly, gratuitously, unnecessarily, uselessly and generously. The filial posture of trust is essential: to be in love is to be safe, comforted, hopeful and free to be genuine, spontaneous, decisive and active. The filial attitude of respect is primal: the beloved is received as worthy, awesome, fascinating, tremendous and holy. Attraction, so pronounced in romantic love, has two faces: in the creature, afflicted with sin, is flows from limitation, lack, privation, and need; but God's attraction to us is different, He desires and comes in search of us out of plenitude, not lack. And so, human desire can spring from the two fountains, one empty and one full. Companionship or partnership means that the lovers always look beyond each other to a shared task, interest, mission, or purpose. The two do not close in upon themselves but open up to a third in a trinitarian manner. Love between the two outflows to a third, always. This reaches a new depth and intensity with the fruitfulness of intimacy, quintessentially in the conception of a new child but analogously in other manners of fecundity. The donative or generous impulse is the marvelous drive to give to the beloved: the mother who breastfeeds, the groom on their wedding night, the child who draws a picture for a grandparent. Care is the tender, cherishing and protective response to the fragility, preciousness and vulnerability of the beloved. The Madonna with Child is the most paradigmatic expression of this. As creatures, we could never care for an infinite, invulnerable God had he not become a helpless infant and gone on to suffer and die for us. This is why a believer never tires of contemplating the crib and the crucifix. Finally, underlying and infusing delight and the accompanying eight moments of love is the most significant: every genuine love (friendship, romance, family) comes from and moves to God. To love, even slightly or momentarily, is to taste heaven. Love conquers death. Love transcends and transforms time and space. Love inspires the flesh but moves beyond it in a vow and surrender that can only find fulfillment in eternity.