Heart-to-Heart: A Look at the Pain of Love

If you love me, you will keep my commandments.[1]

On the face of it, Christ’s words seem obvious: of course we’ll obey Christ because we love Him! Yet, when it comes down to it, loving the Lord and living His commandments feel like two entirely different propositions.

Well, first off, we, as Christians, are defined by His Love. Jesus said,

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.[2]

By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.[3]

We know we are broken and desperately in need of the Love of Christ, and we love to be loved by Him, enjoying the warmth of His Love pouring down upon us from His Heavenly window through His Presence on earth in the Blessed Sacrament.

But His Presence and Love are also most truly keenly felt in the Cross. As He was “obedient unto death, even death on a cross,”[4] so we also are called to the same perfect obedience by living in true accord with the commands of Christ. What are His commands? He gave us two: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”[5]

How do we love God and our neighbor? Telling them we love them, and thinking about how much we love them, are a fine start, but do thoughts and words alone constitute genuine love?

According to St. Paul, love is manifold.

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends… So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.[6]

The essence of love—what love is—is the union of the multiple qualities of virtue. Look at all those active verbs St. Paul uses to show what love is all about. Love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” What can’t love do? Only one thing: love can never end. In some translations, this is rendered: “Love never fails.”

Love this strong, this pure, this beautiful is utterly invaluable. How awesome that we can share in the very essence and Life of God Himself, Who is Love[7]. Yet Love, though freely chosen, is not without a price: since the Fall, Love is uniquely and intricately bound up with suffering in this world.

Love a person, and they may deceive you, abandon you, deny you, betray you. Love any mortal creature, and again you are risking much: they can hurt you, disappoint you, test you, and even the most perfect will, sooner or later, die.

In the words of C.S. Lewis, “There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”[8]

Love hurts. Sacrifices and sufferings freely accepted out of love cost us much, and the cost seems heavier than the reward when Heaven seems so far off in time and space (appearing to confine us here on earth). But this kind of an approach to love, as though we could ‘earn’ our way to Heaven, seems shallow. At the end of the day, when we tally up our good deeds and (if we’re feeling especially confident!) nod contentedly because they so clearly outweigh our sins, do we find the joy and peace for which we long in this score-keeping with God?

No, not really.

Our hearts want something else. Something more. The sufferings we endure: are they really to be borne indifferently for the sake of love? If so, they seem to only have value insofar as we can ‘convert’ them to proofs of love. But what if the very moments of suffering, though apparently loathsome and difficult in themselves, are not merely the means, but the very essence of the Christian Life, the moments when we meet our Beloved Lord Heart-to-heart? What if this moment of trial and terror is not merely to be offered up and set aside as quickly as possible, nor again to be relished with a ghastly ‘heroic’ delight, but seen and embraced as the Cross of Christ, given to us? What if these moments of suffering, offered for love, are the very stepping stones to sanctity?

If this is the case, then everything has value. Getting back to the words of St. Paul, love literally embraces absolutely everything. Yes, love means suffering so often in this world, but no suffering, however great, can detract from the overwhelming share in the Life of God which we embrace when we love.

Why endure the pain of Love? Because we are, by nature, called into communion with the One Who is Love, and the pain is the price of the great joy fulfilled only in Him, for Whom we long. For, “You have formed us for Yourself,” Dear God, and truly, “our hearts are restless till they find rest in You.”[9]

 

 

[1] The Holy Bible: Revised Standard Version, (John 14:15), National Council of the Churches of Christ, 1971, accessed 17 December 2016, https://www.biblegateway.com.

[2] (John 15:12 RSV)

[3] (John 13:35 RSV)

[4] (Philippians 2:8 RSV)

[5] (Matthew 22:36-39 RSV)

[6] (1 Corinthians 13:4-8, 13 RSV)

[7] (1 John 4:8 RSV)

[8] C.S. Lewis, “Charity,” in The Four Loves (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 1960), 121.

[9] Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, I, 1, 1, at New Advent, www.newadvent.org.

Marissa Standage

Marissa Standage

Marissa Standage recently graduated from Holy Apostles College and Seminary with her bachelor's degree in philosophy and theology. She loves teaching and tutoring, and has worked with students of various grades for several years. As the oldest of six, Marissa was home schooled right through high school, and has enjoyed a deep love for the Catholic faith, family, and education based on Socratic discussion. Between her college work and teaching, her favorite past-times include spending time and having great conversations with family and friends, reading, baking sourdough bread (and all kinds of other sourdough goodies from chocolate cake to crackers), and knitting socks. In the midst of this full and wonderful life, she is striving to discern God's plan for her in this world, and to cultivate the virtues in the daily opportunities to grow in His love.

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4 thoughts on “Heart-to-Heart: A Look at the Pain of Love”

  1. Let me balance you…not correct you. God gives us the right to rationally limit our exposure to the pains of love. While Osee was given a very special mission to marry a loose woman so as to sign how God loves His loose woman, the Jews, at that time; Christians are told in the NT not to marry the unbeliever…in others words…limit your exposure to love pain in this case: 2 Corinthians 6:14Douay-Rheims…”14 Bear not the yoke with unbelievers. For what participation hath justice with injustice? Or what fellowship hath light with darkness?”
    That does not insure against marriage pains but it does help greatly in most cases. A Christian spouse can still fall away and become that unbeliever but at least you were given better odds by 2 Cor.6:14.
    Christ requires you to forgive if your brother repents and apologizes. Does He anywhere tell us to call up the non apologizer and have him over for flan and single malt scotch? I don’t see such a passage. Yet it happens everyday thanks to our modern idea…” love is like a ball and chain” Janis Joplin.
    In fact, unlike our new image of Christ, the real Christ was capable of announcing that of ten cured lepers, only one…a Samaritan…thanked Him…” where are the other nine?”. Imagine if a modern Bishop helped ten homeless men and only one returned to thank him. Would our Bishop talk real like Christ…or would he excuse the other nine and be silent on that matter. We all know the answer. If you’re poor now, your poverty is an excuse for everything which it was not for the real Christ. We never see Christ begging for love until Gethsemane wherein He thrice asks the apostles to pray with Him and He gets hurt beyond measure by them during His day of mega pain which Aquinas explained was greater than that of any ordinary human. Peter and Paul’s crucifixion was not the same mega pain as Christ’s…but it was a share in that. But as Aquinas notes, we know from Lamentations 1:12 ( said prophetically of Christ)…that Christ’s love suffering was far beyond that of even Christian martyrs though they partook of His greatly.

    1. That put me in mind of Blessed Elizabeth Canori Mora
      Blessed Elizabeth Canori Mora
      Blessed Elizabeth Canori Mora:

      “Elizabeth Mora’s witness isn’t a call to remain in an abusive
      relationship. She serves less as a model of how to live and more as a
      model of how to love. There are thousands of faithful Catholics whose
      hearts have been broken by abusive and unfaithful spouses. In cases of
      abuse, addiction, or adultery the Church permits spouses to separate,
      but the obligation to love one’s spouse and to work for his conversion
      and salvation remains.”
      http://aleteia.org/2017/02/02/a-saint-for-those-suffering-from-broken-unfaithful-and-abusive-marriages/

    2. That put me in mind of Blessed Elizabeth Canori Mora:

      “Elizabeth Mora’s witness isn’t a call to remain in an abusive relationship. She serves less as a model of how to live and more as a model of how to love. There are thousands of faithful Catholics whose hearts have been broken by abusive and unfaithful spouses. In cases of abuse, addiction, or adultery the Church permits spouses to separate, but the obligation to love one’s spouse and to work for his conversion and salvation remains.”
      http://aleteia.org/2017/02/02/a-saint-for-those-suffering-from-broken-unfaithful-and-abusive-marriages/

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