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Is Love Possible?

Fr. Robert Kocour

(Excerpted from 1982 September-October Worldwide Family Spirit magazine)

Many ask - wondering whether, in this competitive world, there is one corner where it is safe to give one's self unconditionally. As matrimonied couples, your apostolate is to bear witness that - yes - love is possible.

There are two principal relationships in our world: the "taking" relationship and the "giving" relationship – the relationship of power or domination, and the relationship of love. It serves us well to examine these two relationships.

THE TAKING RELATIONSHIP
As an example, let's use the coffee cup. You can take it by the handle, keep it at a distance and look at it from all sides. Or you can bring it to your lips to drink, satisfying your need of the moment. It is an obedient instrument in your hands. You can manipulate it, use it, reject it, or destroy it. You have complete control. Your relationship to the cup is not a relationship of love. It is a "taking" relationship - one of domination and control.

Many interpersonal relationships are like this. And where this "taking" relationship exists, a loving relationship cannot exist. It is rather a relationship of manipulator to manipulated. Love is impossible.

This is why the dating experience is often useless as a preparation for marriage. The "taking" relationship predominates. There is the constant concern: "How am I impressing her?" "What does he think of me?" "How am I going to win her?"

John and Sally, university students, are out walking on a date. For John, it is a "taking" relationship. He is out to conquer. Seeking to impress Sally, he is pursuing some philosophical theme. Sally tires of the conversation: "John, let's talk about us." John is irritated: "How are we going to pass a lifetime together if we cannot carry on an intelligent conversation?" Sally: "I want to marry you, John, not a conversation." Sally understands that love is a relationship of sharing self.

What is called love is quite often a subtle skirmish between man and woman, each trying to conquer the other. The winner - perhaps both in different ways - manipulates the other into the patterns of his or her life. Love becomes a competitive battleground. Love becomes destructive while it ought to be creative.

THE GIVING AND FORGIVING RELATIONSHIP
We Catholics practice confession because we believe that there is a Person who loves us enough to accept and forgive us, despite our weaknesses - a Person who will not manipulate and destroy us because of our weaknesses but, through our mutual sharing, will give us strength and growth - new life.

A couple in love dialogues for the same reason. And I do not mean that they confess past sins to each other - this can be dangerous. Dialogue means "sharing the true self." Maybe we remember the few occasions in our life when we were able to show someone our true self - not only our great successes, but also our weaknesses and pains: not only our radiant face, but also our dark shadow. It took a lot of courage, but was a conversion experience. This conversion, which comes through true dialogue, is the opening of self to the other, and the beginning of true love. This "giving relationship" exists when:

1) We are not only willing to listen, but to dialogue.

2) We seek to not only understand the other, but to know the other. It isn't enough to understand the other. This can be another form of domination. When you decide you understand a person, you stop listening. Understanding shifts importance from who I am to who you think I am; not what I think or feel, but what you think or feel about me. (Evaluation, records, and classifications are based upon understanding. They stand by themselves, apart from the person. More importance is give to these than to the person.) When I understand, I am thinking about the person. When I know the person, I am thinking of or with the person.

3) We do not tolerate otherness, but try to discover the richness of the other.

A "giving" relationship means total self-surrender of the one to the other. When I not only can say: "Your strength is my strength," but also: "Your pain is my pain, your weakness is my weakness, your sin is my sin." From this intimate dialogue of strengths and weaknesses, love is born.

If we are willing to believe that the wheat can only come to maturity if we allow the weeds to exist in the same field, we understand the giving and forgiving relationship of love. This "giving" relationship necessitates:

TRUTHFULNESS - full acceptance of the person in his/her human condition - not what I think he is, not what she could be, but what he/she is at this moment.

TENDERNESS - In love, hands don't take or grasp. They caress. Tenderness makes for growth. Like the gardener who carefully touches the plants to enable the light to shine through and stimulate growth, so the tenderness of the lover allows for full self-expression of the other. This is seen most clearly in the sexual relationship. Sex without tenderness is "taking" - more commonly called "prostitution."

TOTAL DISARMAMENT – The encounter of love is an encounter without hidden weapons (e.g. a bitter memory.) Disarmament in the encounter between two persons is possibly more difficult than international disarmament.

Once again, the sexual relationship is probably the best example of what disarmament is all about. The nakedness of the two bodies must be a sign of the nakedness with which the two encounter each other in every aspect of their relationship. No hidden knives to jab with when I think I am losing.

IS LOVE A POSSIBILITY?
We return to the question. Life is a painful fluctuation between the two desires: that of "taking" and that of "giving." The world tells us that we must take, or we shall be taken. But there are those who tell us that another relationship is possible: that of "giving" - that of love. For many, this appears too risky in our competitive, demanding world. Your apostolate is to show that the risk is worthwhile.

Some persons embrace each other in despair and loneliness. They cling to each other to prevent worse things from happening. And so their intimacy is not a giving, but a taking. They do not create a place where they both can grow, but rather, in each other, they find a shelter in a stormy world.

Many are like the oyster, who keeps his hard shell tightly closed to protect his tender and vulnerable self. Your apostolate is to open that shell, even if it is only somewhat, somewhere, sometime.

Jesus invites you to this apostolate of love: "This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you. There is no greater love than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends." (Jn. 15:12-13) To give one's life for one's beloved: that's definitely putting love in the "giving" camp.

Can you take the risk? St. John gives you reason to take the risk: "We, for our part, love because he first loved us." (1 Jn. 4:19)

Are you strong enough to be weak enough to love? Because the sign of true love is a sign of weakness: a Baby in a manger; a Man on a cross; two people sharing the weakness of mutual giving and forgiving to build a strength which is life-giving.

This possibility of love cannot be proven. It must be experienced. We can only be invited to it, and find it creative and redemptive - a sacrament of salvation. You have been invited. This is your sacrament - your apostolate.

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