God’s Love Lavished Upon Us – Members Content

“God is Love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him”
1 Jn 4:16

According to Pope Benedict XVI, the essence of being a Christian is not so much “the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” [Deus Caritas Est n1]. It is through Jesus Christ that we can know Love Himself.

In the Ancient Greek of the scriptures, three different words were used for ‘love’:

• Philia refers to the love of friendship
• Eros is the erotic, sexual love between lovers
• Agapé, the most commonly used word for love in the New Testament, is a love that seeks the good of the other.

A healthy marriage relationship will pass through each of these three loves in a kind of development and deepening of the love bond. Philia allows a couple to establish a deep and understanding friendship based on shared experiences and intimate conversation. Eros draws the couple into a sexual love, one that transports them from the experience of the ordinary to the extraordinary and the divine. As a couple ‘fall in love’ their urgency for deeper intimacy and communion increases. In a natural progression, selfishness gives way to generous and other-centred care, or agapé. The couple’s love is no longer self-seeking but is prepared to make great sacrifice in order to seek the good of the other.

In all this, Love itself (i.e. God) is revealed; God knows us intimately, He urgently desires to be in communion with us and He generously gives of His body and blood in order to seek our good. God’s love is both intimate and benevolent. When we understand the love God lavishes upon us (philia, eros, agapé), our natural response is to love in return.

“Since God has first loved us, love is no longer a mere “command”, it is the response to the gift of love with which God draws near to us.”
[Deus Caritas Est n1]“Let no man separate what God has joined”- Mt 19:6

The Love of Intimacy

People tend to use the word ‘love’ to mean many things and to characterise many different kinds of relationships. At its simplest, love is typically experienced in two forms: The Love of Intimacy, and the Love of Benevolence

The Love of Intimacy is an experience of knowing and being known, of being accepted at the deepest level. It requires trust and vulnerability. In a love of intimacy, there is an expectation that each person’s needs will be met and considered.

The deeper your intimacy, the more vulnerable you are to being emotionally wounded. With intimacy, hurts can easily happen because you are so open to each other. These wounds can also be healed because of the special graces within marriage. In particular, the tenderising nature of sexuality and the permanency and deep sense of belonging draws you towards union and wholeness.

Benevolent Love is the generous and life-giving love that flows out of intimacy. It is freely given, and expects nothing in return. Benevolent love will not leave you vulnerable to hurts.

Mother Teresa had a great benevolent love for the poor. They did not have to do anything in return. She chose to love generously, and it brought her great joy. The poor could not hurt her feelings because she was not expecting love in return from them. The love she gave to them was an overflow from her intimate relationship with God.

The Love of Benevolence

Engagement is the time to begin the transition from having your need for intimacy met by your family of origin or your friends, to having your need for intimacy met in your marriage relationship. Things tend to go much smoother in the first years of marriage if a couple meets their need for intimacy primarily in their marriage and in their relationship with God.

If your need to be understood, affirmed, needed, trusted, cherished and respected are met by your spouse and by God, you will then freely spend a generous life-giving and benevolent love on your children, parents and extended family. In this way, you can prevent outside hurts that can negatively impact your relationship and divide you, while still loving your families generously. The key is to decide as a couple what you would like to freely give (time, attention, gifts, acts of service) and then give it joyfully with no expectations of their response.

Stories of the Heart

Christmas day celebrations have been a source of tension for us since the day we married.

Trying to blend two different traditions was difficult enough, but on top of that, my Mother wants us at her place every year. While she knows she has to give my wife’s family an opportunity as well, she’s always disappointed when we’re not there. We both would get agitated and felt resentful of the subtle pressure and guilt from my Mother.

When we realised that it was not our job to please my Mother, that she was responsible for her own feelings, it freed us up to make the best decision for our family. And, it gave us more energy for reaching out in kindness to my Mother as well.

I come from an Italian family from New York. That means weddings are elaborate and expected to be big family celebrations. My Mother and Father wanted to invite cousins I had never even met! They had lots of opinions about what kind of party we should have.

I was feeling very torn between pleasing them and choosing what was important to us. Things were getting very stressful until my spouse and I decided to concentrate on each other and the Nuptial Mass and just leave the reception to them.

We were able to make our wedding ceremony unique and special to us while my parents really enjoyed hosting the reception. It became a way for us to love them that flowed out of, and did not interfere with, our love for each other.

Reflect: Pleasing and Loving

Pressure to please extended family is very common when preparing for a wedding. This inevitably creates stress and interferes with loving each other freely.

Pleasing is not the same as loving.

You can be disappointed if someone is not pleased, but if you decide together to do what is good (i.e. what is in the best interest of those you are deciding to love) your relationship will not suffer in the process.

As a couple, you can and should seek intimacy first and foremost in your couple relationship and in your relationship with God.

• Are you willing to love your spouse above everyone else and consider his/her needs first?
• Are you willing to turn to your spouse first to be understood, needed and trusted?
• Which outside relationships may interfere with your new priorities in marriage?