That four-letter word - love, can dog us all our lives. It is part of the human spirit to love. It leads us to extraordinary heights and it can also cause us cruel nightmares.
People fall in love with one another and sometimes it works. On other occasions it leads to anger and bitterness. The newspapers are full of the details of people who once loved and now hate each other. Indeed it often seems as if love and hate are like greatness and madness, and thin partitions doth divide.
Young men and women fall in love, marry and sometimes it works, sometimes they split up. For others it is a life of pain and sadness. How often do you hear of people staying together for the sake of the children?
The rainbows we follow through life so often come tumbling down. The idealism and inspiration of youth can set us on fire and love is part of that equation. Love can lead us to extraordinary feats.
And when you ask what love is, you will get a different answer from everyone you ask. Young teenagers in love will be convinced they have arrived and know what it is. Ask them 10, 20, 30 years down the road and no doubt they will have a totally different story to tell. It's as difficult to say anything about love as it is to say anything about God and in many ways the two words are inextricably linked.
We can say that God's love is revealed to us in Christ. In St John's Gospel 15: 12-16, we are commanded to love one another.
"This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you. There is no greater love than this, to give one's life for one's friends; and you are my friends if you do what I command you."
Jesus goes on to point out that it is not a servant-master relationship because it involves a closeness and knowledge far deeper than anything that could exist between servant and master.
The love that Jesus is talking about involves a deep friendship and knowledge of the other person. It involves respect. It means we spend time and care getting to know the person.
Our love for God and our love for one another can never match God's love for us. How could it? We are not God. But we can learn from it; we can use it as an example for ourselves.
One thing that love is not is selfish. Love has nothing to do with being possessive or wanting for oneself. Love is all about giving, the unquestioning desire to give to someone else. The very act of giving, and giving in a totally unconditional manner, is linked to love and giving fills our hearts and souls with joy.
Love is about placing the other person centre-stage. It has something to do with seeing God in the other person. By realising that we are all made in the image and likeness of God and that his son died on a cross for us, we are opening the door to love.
God is love and just as it is a life-long task to grow in our appreciation and understanding of God, so too is it a life-long pilgrimage to grow in our ability to love.
And it requires hard work and discipline on our part; it's not something that comes easily. It needs all our rational nous to attempt to understand the other person and place ourselves in their shoes; It requires more; we need to be conscious of God's grace and love. That means we pray and turn to God to help us in our daily struggles and confusions.
In loving God we will be forced to see his presence in the other person and in loving our fellow human beings we will get a glimpse, albeit a tiny one, of what it means to love God.
One might say love is an impossible dream, but for the Christian there is the challenge that all things are made possible through God.
M. C.