-Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
Yesterday was Monday and as such I did a music post. The subject was love, and I called it Love: Three Minus One, because the form of love that I was spot-lighting was not romantic love, or eros as it is known in Greek.Below are some thoughts written by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen and published in his book entitled The Power of Love, which hit the bookstores back in 1964.
Bishop Sheen discusses the radical transformation of love from the Catholic perspective which has helped change the world as we know it. This form of love is from the Greek word agape, which in Latin is caritas, which translated into English is the word "charity."
Historically, Catholics have used the word charity in lieu of agape, though many still think of the Salvation Army, or corporal works of mercy when they hear that word, instead of this really unprecedented form of love. Have a look at this passage from Archbishop Sheen's little book,
The third word for love was not much used in the classical Greek; it was a love so noble and divine that Christianity alone made it popular. That word is "agape." It was used only ten times by Homer; it is found only three times in Euripedes; later on, it was used a bit in popular Greek which was spoken throughout the world after Alexander conquered it.
The Greeks did not need such a word, because Plato held that there could be no real love between God and man, inasmuch as the gods being perfect desired nothing; therefore, they had no love for man. Aristotle argued in the same way. He said that there was too great a disporportion between man and God to have any love between the two.
When God sent His only Son to this world to save it, and when His Divine Son offered His life on Calvary to redeem it, then was born a love between God and man which the Greeks could not and did not understand. That kind of love was best expressed by "agape." In contrast to it, the word "eros" is nowhere found in the New Testament; the word "Philia" in all its forms is found forty-five times, but the word "agape" is found 320 times.
Once this agape began to exist, then it flowed down to illumine even Eros; Eros became the sensible expression of Divine Love; fraternal and friendly love was also sanctified by the agape inasmuch as we were to regard everyone else as better than ourselves. The only true lovers or friends are those whose love is explained by the agape of Him who so loved the world He sent His only begotten Son to redeem it.
So agape then is charity, the form of love that St. Paul expounded upon in chapter thirteen of his first letter to the Corinthians. It is this form of love that is used so often in the New Testament. On the YIMCatholic Bookshelf, a search of the word "agape" pulls 22 books (out of 360). Not much, see? But a search of the word "charity," from the Latin form of "agape"(caritas) pulls 208 volumes from our library. Did I mention that Pope Benedict XVI's first encyclical, Caritas in veritate, is on this very subject? And lest I forget, the Catholic Encyclopedia has a fact-filled citation on this subject as well.
Even Thomas Hobbes, author of the classic of political thought, Leviathan (1651), states it thus,
For these seeds have received culture from two sorts of men. One sort have been they that have nourished and ordered them, according to their own invention. The other have done it, by God's commandment and direction : but both sorts have done it, with a purpose to make those men that relied on them, the more apt to obedience, laws, peace, charity, and civil society; So that the religion of the former sort is a part of human politics; and teacheth part of the duty which earthly kings require of their subjects. And the religion of the latter sort is divine politics ; and containeth precepts to those that have yielded themselves subjects in the kingdom of God. Of the former sort were all the founders of commonwealths, and the lawgivers of the Gentiles: of the latter sort, were Abraham, Moses, and Our blessed Saviour; by whom have been derived unto us the laws of the kingdom of God.
To close this brief post on Love, I'll leave you with Archbishop Sheen again, this time from an episode of his television series Life Is Worth Living. Here he discusses Pope John XXIII and his living of this Catholic, this Christian, form of Love. Enjoy.
