The word love is perhaps the most misused and misunderstood word. We throw it around in a wide range of situations so much so that it often has little meaning except to express something positive.
The virtue of love is usually completely different from how people use the word love. The virtue of love is directly related to the virtue of charity, and we can make the case that they are actually the same virtue. This is further confusing because the word charity is often misunderstood as well.
Let’s look at some ways people use the word love:
· To express a deep attraction for another person
· To express a physical attraction for another person
· To express desire for and enjoyment from some activity or object
These are probably the most common uses of the word love, but are focused on desire and affection for someone or something. They express the feelings and emotions of the person.
An emotion is not a virtue. A virtue is a good action that we choose to do and then act upon in a habitual way. Virtues are good habits and specifically relate to moral choices. There are habits that are good, not necessarily virtuous because they don’t relate to a moral good.
For example, I trained for a marathon when I was younger. One of the habits I developed was to ice my knees, shins and ankles after long runs. That was a great habit to help my body recover from a run. Training for a marathon, and the habits that support that activity, are morally neutral. Perhaps a case could be made that the health improvement is a moral good, but marathon training is more extreme than basic exercise for healthy living. The habit of icing my legs was good for my training, but not a virtue.
Contrast this with when my wife had knee surgery and I made sure we swapped out ice packs and regularly iced her knee. That was a short term habit to help her heal properly. That would likely fall into a category of virtue. It was habitual, at least for the time of her recovery, and served her in a time of need.
We have lots of actions and habits that we “love”. This gets back to the emotion and desire, not the act.
St. Thomas Aquinas defines love very differently from how we might. He explains that love is willing the good of another for the sake of the other.
There is a lot packed into this. To will the good of another, we must identify something that would be good for them, and then choose to do that action. Aquinas separates the Intellect, Will and Passions. The intellect is where we consider what we should do. The will is where our resolve to do an action comes from. Knowing what is good isn’t sufficient to do what is good. We have to will that action. The passions are our emotions.
Note that Aquinas’ definition of love does not mention the passions. How we feel about the action is irrelevant.
This is most obvious in the greatest act of love in history. Jesus determined the best thing for humanity was to offer Himself as a sacrifice for the reparation of our sins. He willed to do this and took up His cross for us. We read in His agony in the garden the anxiety, fear and difficulty He had. His Passion involved physical and emotional torture until He died.
This act of love was contrary to His emotions. Jesus died on the cross for all of us, but that includes the Pharisees who handed Him over, Pilate who condemned Him, and the soldiers who executed His torture and crucifixion. I can’t imagine, in His human nature, that He felt good feelings and emotions for them during His crucifixion. Despite that, He cries out to His Father asking for forgiveness for them. That action had to be contrary to how He felt.
The way we often use love focuses on things or people that provide us with good emotions, things that make us feel good. That usage has nothing to do with the virtue of Love.
A second important aspect of Aquinas’ definition of love is that it is for the sake of the other. Love is doing was is good for another independent of any benefit to ourselves. Christ didn’t gain anything for Himself in His crucifixion. Everything about that action was for us (and giving glory to the Father by doing the Father’s will).
The Virtue of Love
Now that we have looked two views of love, the way the world usually uses the word and how it is used as a virtue, we can look at the virtue closer.
With the virtue of love, we can love anyone. Jesus calls us to love our enemies. If love is a feeling, then it may be impossible to love an enemy. To understand, it might be helpful to broaden our sense of enemy.
Think of a person that irritates you. The person does not have to be an enemy in the sense of someone on a battlefield you are fighting. It could be a family member that just rubs you the wrong way. When I was much younger, my grandmother was developing dementia. She struggled with conversations and ultimately could only talk about what she knew well. That was limited to specific aspects of her life.
I regret that as a self-absorbed teenager, I found her unpleasant, and uninteresting and saw her as completely focused on herself.
I should have been much more patient with her and sought to comfort her and make the times we were together enjoyable for her. That would have been love of an enemy, not an enemy that was an opponent, but someone who was not a desirable companion.
What was best for her would have been engaging in conversations, asking questions and listening to her stories. Her stories were often the same from visit to visit, and a loving response would have been to show interest and attentiveness to those stories no matter how many times she told them.
That is one example of love. The saints are wonderful examples of love. St. Francis is known for helping lepers. He had a great revulsion to those stricken with leprosy but chose to help lepers and befriended many. He loved them, disregarding his emotions and acting for their good. Eventually, he learned to appreciate and respect them and developed an affection and fondness for them.
As his emotions changed, his love for them became easier. It is easy to do good things for our close friends and family, but difficult for those that offend us, irate us or hurt us. Love doesn’t require us to feel good about the people.
It should be obvious that the virtue of love is directed toward people not objects. There is no virtue in loving a piece of chocolate cake. We use the word love to express an intense desire and enjoyment of the cake, but that’s not the virtue of love.
Love and Charity
Love and charity are similar if not identical virtues. We don’t always understand charity. It is often used to describe giving money to a person or organization to achieve some good. That certainly can be virtuous, but charity is much broader.
Charity is doing what is best for another person. If this sounds like the definition of love, that’s good, it should sound a lot like it. They are essentially the same thing, at least when we’re talking about the virtues.
If we focus on the common way these words are used in our society, they are far from interchangeable. Love is an emotion of affection, desire and enjoyment and charity is giving to a person or donating to an organization. Neither captures the real meaning or the virtue at the core of both.
Charity is doing what is best for another, without regard to the cost or benefit to the person doing the act. It is easy to be charitable to people we care for, but far harder to give to those that offend or irate us. Again, this should sound just like love.
Keeping both words in mind when we consider how we should act can be extremely helpful. Love has such an emotional connotation that it can help remind us that we are doing something for the benefit of the other person. Charity, with the focus on giving money in how the word is usually used, can help remind us that we are giving something of ourselves. It is a sacrifice we make for the other person.
Putting all this together, we have what may the be pinnacle of all virtue. Love as a virtue, whether called love or charity, is where all the other virtues come together. Faith, Hope, Humility, Compassion, Generosity, Prudence, Chastity, Fortitude, Patience, Courage, Temperance, and many other virtues are required to truly love.
St. Paul writes of Faith, Hope and Love and says the greatest of these is Love. Every virtue helps us unite with God in some way, but love is where that union is deepest. God is love, and all the other virtues are the tools necessary for us to love.
Love isn’t just for other people. We are called by Jesus in Matthew 22:27 to love God with all our heart, all our soul and all our mind. God doesn’t need anything from us, so if love is willing the good of another, how can we love God? He is already perfectly good and lacking nothing.
Our first commandment, to love God, can only be lived by doing God’s will. It is surrendering to God and following His path for us that we can love Him. This pleases God, but it leads directly to the second commandment that Jesus gives, to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
God created the world such that each of us is lacking and needs help from others. God’s plan is a plan that needs love. None of us can go it alone. We all need help.
We can love God by doing His will and His will is for us to love each other. When we love each other, we are following God’s will, honoring and glorifying Him and loving Him.