Love’s Irresistible Promise of Happiness
by Christopher West
I was pushing the
“seek” button on my car radio the other day looking for a decent
song. Station 1: “love me, love me, say that you love me....”
Station 2: “Baby-eyah-eyah-eyah, my world stands still when I’m
with you oh-oo-oh....” Station 3: “I’m keepin’ you forever and
for always, we will be together all of our days....” Station 4:
“Love, love me do, you know I love you....”
In the midst of so many songs seeking or celebrating love, I was
reminded of something Pope Benedict said in his grand encyclical
God is Love. He observed that in the “love between man and
woman... human beings glimpse an apparently irresistible promise
of happiness” (n. 2). Why, then, do we also have songs on the
radio like “Love Stinks” (J. Geils band, anyone)? How is it that
something promising such happiness leads so often to misery and
despair? Are we mistaken to look for happiness in the love
between man and woman? What light does the Gospel shed on any of
this?
When some Pharisees questioned Jesus about the meaning of
marriage, they recalled to him that Moses allowed divorce.
Jesus’ reply provides one of the keys to understanding the
Gospel: “For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce
your wives, but from the beginning it was not so” (Mt 19:8). In
effect, Jesus is saying something like this: “You think all the
tension, conflict, and heartache in the male-female relationship
is normal? This isn’t normal. This isn’t the way God created it
to be. Something has gone terribly wrong.”
The Catechism teaches us that “the disorder we notice so
painfully [in the male-female relationship] does not stem from
the nature of man and woman, nor from the nature of their
relations, but from sin. As a break with God, the first sin had
for its consequence the rupture of the original communion
between man and woman” (CCC, n. 1607). That’s the bad news. But
here’s the good news: “Jesus came to restore creation to the
purity of its origins” (CCC, n. 2336). Therefore, by “following
Christ, renouncing themselves, and taking up their crosses
...spouses will be able to ‘receive’ the original meaning of
marriage and live it with the help of Christ” (CCC, n. 1615).
Men and women are not entirely mistaken to seek happiness in the
sexual relationship. But eros (human, erotic love) has no
possibility of granting the happiness it promises if it is cut
off from agape (divine, sacrificial love).
Where did Jesus perform his first miracle and what was it? The
newly married couple at Cana had run out of wine and Christ
restored it in superabundance. The “new wine” Christ offers at
this marriage celebration is a symbol revealing the heart of his
mission: Jesus came to restore the order of love in a world
seriously distorted by sin. And the union of the sexes, as
always, lies at the basis of the human “order of love.”
Wine is a biblical symbol of God’s love poured out for us. In
the beginning before sin, man and woman were “inebriated” on
God’s love, so to speak. Divine love flowed from them and
between them like wine. Since the dawn of sin, however, we have
all “run out of wine.” We don’t have what it takes to love each
other in a way that corresponds with our heart’s true desire.
And so, the man-woman relationship offers an “irresistible
promise of happiness,” but lacking God’s “wine,” it cannot
deliver. Or, as the J. Geils band put it, lacking God’s wine,
“love stinks.”
This is why the miracle at the wedding feast in Cana is such
cause for rejoicing. Christ came into the world to restore the
wine into man and woman’s relationship – to penetrate eros with
agape. As we drink deeply from this “new wine,” we find
ourselves empowered to love as we are called to love. This
doesn’t make love easy – true love always passes by way of the
cross – but it does make true love possible. This is good news
in a world of wounded lovers.
Republished
with permission from:
http://www.christopherwest.com
original article:
http://www.christopherwest.com/article2.asp
