God Is Love

 My sister was watching an episode of the television show "Arthur", and one of the episodes began with the sister talking about the "types of love", and in this episode she begins by giving four types of love. Romantic love (or "grown up love" as she calls it), friendly love, family love, and finally grandparent love. And my reaction to this was, "so close, three out of four".

In the Bible, in Greek, there are four main types of love. They follow: eros, storge, philia, and agape. Which follow just about the same as the show: romantic, familial, friendly (or brotherly), and finally, the Love God has for humanity.

We are all familiar with the saying: "God is Love", that expresses the fact that the very being of God is one that loves, one that loves humanity. When we speak of love in English, we speak very limited, having one word to express so much.

Trent Horn takes a look at how the world "love" has been destroyed by the false ideals of homosexuality, turning all types of love (especially philia or brotherly love) into romantic love. He looks at this with one of his favorite Children's books, Toad and Frog, (and he has several videos on homosexulaity, so I pin pointed the exact one for those of you curious, but for sure check out the Council of Trent Podcast) which is quite a shame. Philia is the love we should be willing to have for our friends, for those close to us.

Eros love, is only a part of love, it is not the full definition of love. Romantic love, is only one form of love, the love between a man and a woman, in the God-Instituted Sacrament of Marriage. For God chooses one man and one woman to come togheter, to become one flesh in the Sacrament of Marriage, and then to bring forth life. Eros is one of the most important, and most true forms of love. It is the deep love that God made between man and woman, a very important love.

But all love is modeled in Agape Love, that is the very deep love that God has for man. All love is holy, all love can God be found in, because God made love, and God's agape love then serves as the model for all love.

To get back to the show I talked about in the beginning, this love then could be considered like the love that the grandmother is compared to. Of course, this is not a perfect example. God is oft compared to a father, in his love for his creation, that is his "children", the people of his creation. God's love is complete for humanity.

God does not call us to give reciprocal or equal value love to his, because we simply cannot. God's love for us is perfect, and we can fail, but he does not, and so he wants our complete heart, even if the love it can give can never (and will never) be equal to the love we can give Him.

Love is of God. Love is God's gift to humanity, and he calls humanity to love. To love him, and to love one and other. Philia is the most simplest yet profound love, the love between brethern, the love between members of a community, as Catholics, the love that should be between each and every Christian believer. That is why we can call it, brotherly love (hence the name of Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love).

Obviously, storge is easy to understand, I do not need to explain familial love, because I believe this one can be well understood. This is the love a mother and father have for their children, and their children to them, and then to aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents, so on and so forth.

Eros, again is the love between one man and one woman, who oft are married or are discerning marriage. It could be considered the deepest love besides the love of God.

Often when talking with children, as even was seen in this show, love is treated almost at an arms length, especially romantic love. It is often looked at with disdain, disgust, almost grossness, like an annoyed sound at romance shown on television. As it was best put to me, "doesn't love as the world show it seem shallow?". And yes, when we remove God from the equation of love, it will seem shallow. Especially romantic love, it can seem empty, and when that is the only understanding of love we have, than love will certainly be shallow.

I love the way the Hillybilly Thomists put it in one of their songs: "Love is patient, love is kind, it does not boast, it does not rely upon itself. Make me patient, make me kind, pray my love, may it not run dry". Love is of God, and all of these forms of love, can ultimately find their root in God.

So, Love one and other, and look at all as brothers. Find that love is of God, and love others because of him. Love, matters. Love, is important. These four main forms of love, are all centered to God. Love is much more than romance, love is much more than shallow Valentine hearts and "mush-gushy feelings" (if you will), it is a deep human thing, that above all find its roots in God.

By the way, this is the first podcast Episode I am scripting, and the script will be uploaded to  the blog, with some changes. The episode will be up after the blog post is up, but, we will refine things as time goes on. So this post is the script, and so this is hopefully how things will be done from now on. I usually don't script, but now I am, so that way we don't get all scattered around.

There will be daily blog posts. I wish I could best put cards in these videos, but because I upload them from the YouTube app, I can't do that. So, there will not be links, and also I cannot do links in Spotify, so I can't do one and not the other.

That's it for today, God Bless!