I think a lot about love and what I consider its four movements.
What is Love?
First: What is love? I invite you to pause here for a second and consider how you would define love.
Commonly we hear that love is not a feeling, but an act of the will, a decision for the well-being of the beloved. That definition has merit but is too narrow for me: it sets the will against the heart and ignores the intellect. It isolates the act of the will and fragments it from the entire person.
My definition of love: engagement of the whole person in the Goodness, Beauty and Truth of a reality that elicits the knowing approval of the intellect, the delight of the heart, and the decision of the will to honor, celebrate, protect and enhance the beloved reality.
Understood thus, love is far more than a feeling but it involves the heart and therefore desire, emotion and passions. It is an intellectual act since we cannot love something we do not know. It moves into the will with the desire to unite with the beloved as well as to honor, protect and enhance and therefore give oneself to the beloved. It is receptive before it is active but it is both/and: a mutual engagement, an event, a drama.
Analogy
The Catholic intellect understands all of reality in the light of ANALOGY. (The meaning of "analogy" WILL be on the test!) Analogy is: a similarity within a greater difference. We see all of reality as created by God: so creation, coming from God, in some way resembles God, and yet is precisely Not-God as creation and not Creator. This simple concept is the basis for all Catholic theology. God is "father" in that our fathers, at their best, image God but in an infinitely different reality. Our very being, as finite/mortal/contingent/fallible/dependent images the BEING of God which is infinite, eternal, gratuitous, infallible and independent.
Within Creation itself different "realities" or "levels of being" are analogous to each other: at once similar and yet immensely different. They are not univocal, all the same. They are not anomalous, entirely different. So, we have material reality (rock), vegetative (flowers), animal (dogs), human (angimal), spiritual (angels and devils), Divine, abstract (numbers), virtual (internet), fictional, and so forth.
Everything that has being, that has come from the hand of the Creator, is in itself Good/True/Beautiful and therefore evocative of love. But the thing is known and loved as it is: so our love for a garden is different from our love for our best friend is different from our love for Jesus our Lord. But they are analogous: vastly different but similar in that they involve an intellectual approval, a heartfelt delight, and a commitment of the will to honor and protect.
Genuine love is approval, delight and commitment to the good of the beloved's very self. So, if I say "I love Jersey Mike's subs" I am speaking of what is really a sub-love, a delight and desire that is not real love since it is pleased, not by the sandwich in itself, but in the pleasure derived from eating it. It actually destroys its object. There is an analogy here so we can honestly say "I love this sandwich" but we know it is really pleasure, not real love. I will argue below that sexual attraction and even romance are not genuine, pure loves but are themselves good and natural (created) realities, sub-loves, that properly directed can enrich and develop the deeper, truer forms of love.
The Four Loves of C.S. Lewis
Hopefully, you have or will read the classic The Four Loves by the incomparable C.S. Lewis. He describes four basic loves: Agape, selfless concern for the other; Eros, desire for the beautiful and the good; Philia, friendship as equality in shared valuing of some good or goods; and Storge, natural affection as in familial fondness. Agape finds its perfect expression in Jesus on the cross, loving his enemies. Eros is not primarily physical/sexual desire but longing for the Good/True/Beautiful. Some have set Agape against Eros but Pope Benedict in a more Catholic tradition sees that the two infuse each other: Jesus sacrificed himself for us even as he desired to have us with the Father in heaven. His desire was pure Eros, not flowing from a need or deficiency on his part, but from the overflowingly gratuitous generosity of the Triune Event of Love. Philia is friendship between equals in which there is a shared interest, love, or value: we play hockey or shop or pray together. Finally, Storge is natural affection that even animals can demonstrate. It is the instinctive fondness we have for our immediate family (although not all of the time) or the fond response to a cute child, animal or old person.
Paca's Fleckinsteinian Four Movements
My four movements of love resemble those of Lewis with some differences: Tender Care, Reverence, Delight with Desire, Friendship in the Good.
Tender Care is the compassionate, merciful, generous and sacrificial care for the Beloved in her suffering, vulnerability, and sadness. It is God's love for us in our misery and sin. It is the heart of maternal and paternal love as Mercy: fierce yearning for the well-being of the beloved in her precious weakness. It will characterize any genuine love in the degree that the beloved is suffering. It is a combination of Lewis's Agape and Storge since it incorporates the physical/emotional/familial emotion of tenderness into the sacrificial, selfless care for the other's well being.
Reverence is admiration, esteem and reverence for the goodness, truth and beauty of the beloved. If the prior love responds to vulnerability and weakness, this responds to strength, valor, generosity. It is essentially our love for God in his might and our poverty. It is the filial affection of the child for mother and father as they provide and comfort from their strength. It includes trust and gratitude. It is the reciprocal of Tender Care as that is received in trust, gratitude and eventually reverence. This again combines Lewis's Eros and Storge as they merge in all filial, trusting, grateful, respectful loves. If tender care flows from strength and fulness, reverence flows from weakness and need.
Friendship in the Good Is the same as Lewis's philia: between equals (brothers and sisters, friends) there is a sharing in some good beyond themselves. A relationship in which two find mutual pleasure, as in a romance, but does not open up to some greater good will eventually show itself to be a reciprocity in need-fulfillment and fall to pieces. We see this all the time, in movies and real life. Often such failed relationships retain deep disappointment, sadness and resentment. Of course, the higher the good the deeper the friendship. So my baseball friendships will be smaller than genuine intellectual relationships will be lesser than partnerships in prayer.
Delight with Desire Delight in the beloved is at the heart of every love. It commingles with the intellectual approval as well as the intention to honor. It also flows into Desire, in the deepest and highest sense. Delight is different from pleasure: delight is joy in beholding the beloved, while pleasure can be self-serving and indifferent to the real value or well-being of its object. So the word "desire" is problematic since it will more often than not refer to a lower-level longing that is self-serving, possibly corrupt and evil, but at best a sub-love or natural need for affection, attention and satisfaction. But a wholesome love will also desire the beloved. A mother and child desire each other, in a way that can be holy and wholesome. God desires us in a way that is absolutely holy.
I suggest to you that every love is a combination of some, maybe all of these four loves. For example, a healthy marriage will include all four to an intense degree. And in marriage the first two, tender care and reverence, will flow fluidly in a fascinating dance as each spouse serendipitously manifests both strengths and weaknesses. My own happy experience has been that most often when I am weak my bride is strong and when she is weak I become strong.
Sexual and Romantic Attraction
As mentioned: physical and emotional attraction are not genuine, pure loves. They are not selfless regard for the worth of the beloved. They arise from ones own physical, emotional and psychological needs and urges. As such they are natural, created and good in themselves. They serve many good purposes in God's providential design. When attracted to someone, I recommend a prayer of gratitude: for the goodness of the person and for your own God-created attraction. Along with that pray for the well being of that person especially if he/she is not available as a potential spousal partner. Ask for yourself God's grace to relate in a pure, tender, reverent way with this person.
Such feelings are ordinary and natural but they can also be very powerful and are usually accompanied by good or bad spirits. The good spirits are the genuine loves: tender care, reverence, delight and friendship in the good. These may draw the two of you down a path into perpetual, joyous marital union. Or they might enrich a friendship that maintains a respectful distance and restrain. Alternately, of course, they can commingle with selfishness, lust, covetousness, resentment, dominance and dysfunctional neediness...and do immense damage. Here we return again to the importance of chastity.
Conclusion
At this point you might ponder your many friendships, loves, loyalties, and attractions. Do you notice that some of your relationships are especially strong in any one of the four movements.
As your grandfather, I enjoy all four of them for each of you. But above all you are for me, each in your distinctive manner, a PURE DELIGHT!
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