Real Love

Today’s readings give us a concept that our culture thinks it already understands: love. Our culture, western culture, speaks constantly about love. They say that love is affirmation. Love is acceptance. Love is desire. Love is romance. Love is emotional intensity. Love is being seen and validated. If it feels strong and sincere, it must be love.

This is all to say that general culture tends to define love in two primary ways: first, love is emotion, a powerful internal feeling. Second, love is unconditional affirmation,  supporting someone’s choices without judgment and full-throated encouragement. Love, in this view, is measured by intensity and tolerance. It is something we feel and something we give in order to validate another person’s self-expression.

But today’s readings dismantle that definition and replace it with something far deeper, far more demanding, and far more salvific.