A Many-Splendored Love

On the Feast of Pope St. John Paul II

 22 October 2014

The poets love to sing that, “Love is a many splendored thing.”  Indeed, love can fly you to the moon, or dump you in the depths of despair.  We can try to run from love and its strange power over us, but we cannot hide.  Pope St. John Paul II went so far as to say, “Man [and woman] cannot live without love.”  We can live without television, we can live without alcohol, we can live without sunsets over the Pacific Ocean, but we cannot live without love.  Without love, we will die.  In his penetrating book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl gave powerful proof of how clinging to love helped many survive the Nazi concentration camps.  Without love, we will die; with love, we are stronger than death.

But what is love, this “many splendored thing”?  The Scriptures tell us where to start: “For this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he has loved us” (1 John 4:10).  That passage has baffled me for years (and still does), but here’s one interpretation: love isn’t something WE do first, but rather something GOD does first, and therefore something God has to teach us.  In other words, we make many mistakes trying to love others.  Just think of all the ways you failed today: we love some people too much (like our children) and we love other people too little (like our enemies).  So God has to show us how to love properly and perfectly.  What does God teach us about love?  St. John continues, “And [God] sent his son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.”  That is, God loves us for our benefit, not for His own good.  Genuine, true love seeks first and foremost the good of the beloved, not its own good (although the lover certainly benefits in the balance).  Love – at least, God-style love – is unselfish, and because it is unselfish it feels like a sacrifice, it’s hard, it hurts.  “He sent his son as a sacrifice.”  At the heart of every true love is a gift: something I freely and joyfully (often sacrificially) do for you.  That is the first and most important lesson of love.

Love again glitters in the limelight as the question of love’s institutional expression, namely, marriage, grabbed the attention of the Supreme Court of the United States.  The SCOTUS recently ruled that certain federal benefits should be granted to same-sex couples, and declined to rule on California’s Proposition 8, which effectively allowed same-sex marriage in that state, as well as every other state.  Since then, state after state has conceded legal status to same-sex couples, and I believe the trend will continue and gain momentum.  But here’s the fundamental problem: our culture and our country lack the philosophical and constitutional principles to successfully stave off same-sex marriage becoming “the new normal.”  Why is that?  As far back as 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville made a piercing and prophetic observation in his book Democracy in America, saying, “America is therefore one of the countries in the world where philosophy is least studied, and where the precepts of Descartes are best applied.”  How so?  He continued, “Everyone shuts himself up in his own breast, and affects from that point to judge the world.”  We “shut ourselves up in our own breast” when love is what WE believe it is rather than letting God teach us what HE believes it is.  President John F. Kennedy summarized accurately the prevailing American view of the separation of religion from political life when, on September 12, 1960, he addressed the Greater Houston Ministerial Association.  He said: “Whatever issue may come before me as President--on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject--I will make my decision in accordance with these views [that is, the absolute separation of church and state], in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates.  And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.”  While Kennedy’s speech is laudable in many respects – and helped him get elected! – it also evicted religion from its rightful role in the public square.  When we refuse to allow God to teach us about love, whether through Christianity or any other “religious megaphone” God uses to speak to the world, “we shut ourselves up in our own breast.”  We grope blindly in the dark, trying to grasp at love either through trial and error, or democratic vote, or judicial fiat, but we will come up short.  We cannot figure out what love is on our own; God must teach us.

Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t advocate throwing in the political towel, or feel like Don Quixote charging a windmill.  While it may be unlikely to stop same-sex marriage gaining ground, some compromise solution is still possible and desirable, like granting benefits to couples but not calling it marriage, or individual states not capitulating or compromising at all, or strengthening traditional marriages, etc.  But I’m not holding my breath.  In the United States and much of western civilization, love will indeed be a many splendored thing.

How do we live in this increasingly atheistic culture, where God’s voice is “anathema” in the public square?  Let’s go back to Pope St. John Paul II, who said, “Man cannot live without love.”  I have several friends who are homosexual.  They are sincere, courageous Catholics and I love them dearly.  John Paul’s statement is as true for them as for the couple happily married for 50 years.  Homosexual persons cannot live without love.  For that matter, celibate priests cannot live without love (in case you’re wondering).  But we don’t crack the code of love without divine help.  We Christians also look to Scripture that says love is a sacrificial gift; it seeks the benefit of my beloved before my own happiness (and often at the price of my own immediate happiness).  That’s one reason I chose to be a celibate priest, sacrificing my sexuality puts the needs of the parish above my own desires.  That’s why dating couples choose chastity, seeking the holiness of their boyfriend or girlfriend at a painful personal price.  But that’s the hard road; it’s the way of the cross.  Not only is it hard to choose that, it’s confounding to comprehend WHY we should.  That’s why God has to teach us what love is.  Love is not what we think it is; love is what God thinks it is.

For all who struggle to love – pretty much the whole human race – the best way to learn about love is to fall in love with Jesus first.  Our Lord must be our “Significant Other,” and our most Significant Other.  One day, a scribe asked Jesus, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment?”  Jesus replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment.”  Once you’ve mastered that, you can move on to the second commandment, “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mt. 22:37-39).  I firmly believe that anyone who loves God with all their heart and all their soul and all their mind will choose what’s best for their beloved instead of what they want for themselves, they will sacrifice their own desires (even sexual desires).  Once you’ve learned to love God (and obey His teachings), you’ll be in a better position to love your neighbor (even your same-sex neighbor).  Maybe a similar conviction inspired St. Augustine to make the daring statement, “Love, and do what you will.”  I am convinced that any person who loves Jesus (not the Jesus of our imagination, but the real Jesus) with that kind of intensity will choose either heterosexual marriage or refrain from sexual activity.  Dag Hammerskjold, secretary-general of the United Nations (1953-1961), voluntarily chose celibacy for the sake of world peace.  Mahatma Gandhi and his wife chose to be celibate for the sake of Indian independence.  Same-sex couples, while remaining in a deeply committed and warmly loving relationship (maybe even enjoying the civil status of marriage), should refrain from sexual activity out of love for God, and love for each other.  Love – God-style love – seeks the good of the beloved, often at a steep personal cost.  Any other “love” is a chimera of our own making.

Anyway, when we get to heaven, all bets will be off on marriage because there won’t be any marriage, same-sex or otherwise.  “At the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like the angels in heaven” (Mt. 22: 30) – that, by the way, is the real Jesus talking.  Here’s a snap-shot of heaven: in some mysterious, mystical way, all humanity will comprise the corporate “Bride” and our one “Spouse” will be Christ.  In heaven the heterosexuals don’t win, and the homosexuals won’t win.  Only those who love Jesus will win.  Celibate priesthood anyone?