What is Love:
" Love embraces the whole of existence in each of its dimensions, including the dimension of time."

" Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. "(St Paul)

"God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him" (St John)

This phrase from ST JOHN reflects the importance of love in believing in God , as if we say we believe in him is to say we believe in love as well as. So God and love come as one package, to reject the idea of love is to reject the Idea of God.

"Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction."

Christianity is more than just to believe and proclaim but the encounter to find meaning in life, so it is not the exterior that matters but the inner spirituality and communion with God that matters. Evangelisation without inner spiritual communion with God is just hypocracy.

* " The term "love" has become one of the most frequently used and misused of words, a word to which we attach quite different meanings."

Types of Love:
Eros: Love between Man and Women
Philia: the love of friendship
Agape: Christian love, "charity"
Dodim: a love that is still insecure, indeterminate and searching

Controversy of Eros:
" According to Friedrich Nietzsche, Christianity had poisoned eros, which for its part, while not completely succumbing, gradually degenerated into vice."

To the Greeks Eros was thus celebrated as divine power, as fellowship with the Divine due to their believe of "sacred" prostitution which flourished in many temples.

However the Old Testament firmly opposed this form of religion, states that counterfeit divinization of eros actually strips it of its dignity and dehumanizes it.

" An intoxicated and undisciplined eros, then, is not an ascent in "ecstasy" towards the Divine, but a fall, a degradation of man. Evidently, eros needs to be disciplined and purified if it is to provide not just fleeting pleasure, but a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence, of that beatitude for which our whole being yearns."


" Man is truly himself when his body and soul are intimately united; the challenge of eros can be said to be truly overcome when this unification is achieved. Should he aspire to be pure spirit and to reject the flesh as pertaining to his animal nature alone, then spirit and body would both lose their dignity. On the other hand, should he deny the spirit and consider matter, the body, as the only reality, he would likewise lose his greatness."

Man is made up of body and soul, he cannot neglect completely neither the body and soul. For if he rejected his body completely and completely accept the spirit, his body is not given the respect. However if he were to accept body completely, and reject the spirit totally, he will lose the communion with God. Therefore, this phrase is trying to show us that even though we seek spiritual perfection, we still have to accept our imperfections of the body. As both must co-exist in harmony in order to reflect the greatness of God's Creation as both the body and spirit were created by God.

"(In Modern Society) Eros, reduced to pure "sex", has become a commodity; a mere "thing" to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity. Man now considers his body and his sexuality as the purely material part of himself, to be used and exploited at will."

In Modern Society, man has started to reject the spiritual nature of "Eros" and focus completely on the bodily nature of "Eros", that is when "Eros" has been degraded to "Sex" which is perceive by our society today as a commodity which can be bought and sold.

About "Dodim":
" Love now becomes concern and care for the other. No longer is it self-seeking, a sinking in the intoxication of happiness; instead it seeks the good of the beloved: it becomes renunciation and it is ready, and even willing, for sacrifice."

About "Agape":
" We become "one body", completely joined in a single existence. Love of God and love of neighbour are now truly united: God incarnate draws us all to himself. We can thus understand how agape also became a term for the Eucharist."

Agape can be seen as the type of love that keeps the religion together, as it emphasis unconditional love for God as well as for neighbour; this reflect in the Eucharist which serves as symbol to keep the church united with God as well as among the believe. When we all receive the holy Eucharist together as one church, we are symbolical expressing that we are a family bounded by Agape love.

THE PRACTICE OF LOVE BY THE CHURCH

"Love is therefore the service that the Church carries out in order to attend constantly to man's sufferings and his needs, including material needs."