What is love?

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Gospel: Matthew 22: 34-40

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees,
they gathered together, and one of them,
a scholar of the law, tested him by asking,
“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
He said to him,
“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart,
with all your soul, and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”

The Gospel of the Lord.

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When preparing couples for marriage, I always ask them: “What is love?”

It’s beautiful to see how unique each response – and relationship – can be.

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If a couple struggles to formulate an answer, I offer one of my favorite definitions of love, coming from Shakespeare’s famous play, Romeo and Juliet.

You may remember the balcony scene when a young Juliet gazes down upon Romeo and says, “Romeo, the more I give to you, the more I seem to have.”

That’s the strange, scary, exhilarating truth about love: the more we give, the more we have.

I call it the law of self-donation, which has been written into all of creation.

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If you walk outside and look up, what will you see? The sun does not shine on itself; it gives its light away, warming and brightening the earth.

Trees do not eat their own fruit; they offer it for the nourishment of others. Meanwhile, their branches reach for the heavens, growing leaves, offering others shade from the noonday heat.

Rivers do not drink their own water. Flowers release their fragrance.

Living for others – giving oneself away – is a law of nature written into all of creation, including every human heart.

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In what ways do I give myself away? How do I live like the sun and the stars?

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“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,” Jesus says, “and your neighbor as yourself.” These are the greatest of the commandments.

May we embrace this law of self-donation, living like all of creation. 

The more we give, the more we will seem to have.

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Image credits: (1) Life Coach and Spiritual Guide (2) The Conversation (3) philosiblog