Love fuels generosity

YES, of course, where there is love, there is generosity. The two cannot be separated.

It’s in the very essence of love to give oneself without measure, without calculation, without expecting any return. It just gives and gives, even if along the way it encounters difficulties, rejection, suffering. It embraces them, not flee from them. By its nature, it is given gratuitously.

Love engenders generosity and its relatives: magnanimity, magnificence, compassion, patience, and pity. This is the language of love, the currencies it uses. It thinks big, even if the matter involved is small according to human standards. In fact, it’s love that makes small, ordinary things big and special.

That’s in theory. In practice, though, there can be elements that put limits and conditions to that love. This can be due to a number of reasons.

One, because man grows by stages, and his capacity to love also develops in stages. It goes through a development timeline, much like one’s growth timeline from childhood to adulthood and maturity.

Thus, philosophers have distinguished more or less like 3 kinds or stages of love: “eros,” where one loves another because of what he can get from that other person. This usually happens among children who love others mainly because of what they can get in return from others. That’s very understandable.

Then, there’s “filia,” where one loves another because he shares the same things-interests, likes and dislikes-with that person. This is typical of young boys and girls who happen to like sharing things among themselves.

Then, there’s the final stage of “agape,” where one loves another because they just want to, without expecting any return, and continues to love even if that love is unreciprocated, or worse, rejected. This is the love of the truly mature persons and definitely of heroes and saints.

Each one of us has to figure out which kind of love he has, does or lives. It can happen that even if one is already of a certain age, he is still stuck with the “eros” type of love. But if everything in the development process goes well, he should reach the ultimate, perfect level of love.

There can be reasons why one gets stunted in his loving. When one, for example, is mainly dominated by an emotion or material-based kind of loving, then he tends to be self-centered, unable to transcend beyond his own interests and preferences.

He cannot truly love. His loving has some strings attached or ulterior motives. He cannot soar far and high from himself.

We have to understand that to be able to love, we need to be with God, for God is love. He is the source, pattern and end of love. All our loves here on earth, to be real, have to be inspired by that love that is in God. Otherwise, they are fake.

It stands to reason then that we need to go to him, to pray and meditate on his love-how he created us and endowed us with the best things in life, making us his image and likeness, and in fact, children of his.

We need to realize ever deeply that his love goes to the extent of forgiving us for our sins and stupidities, and not only by decreeing things, but by assuming even our sinfulness and dying to it

We need to feel that love in a very direct and immediate way, which can only be achieved first of all with his grace, but also with our effort. We need to feel that such love is the one that inspires, directs, and energizes our loves here on earth.

So, we really need to spend time entering into this reality, first of all, by praying, by meditating, then by studying the doctrine of our faith, since God’s love is not mere sentiments. It involves truth whose substance is passed on to us through the doctrine revealed and lived by Christ, and now authoritatively taught by the Church.

We need to outgrow our tendency to fall for an unrealistic and sugary understanding of love, so common these days, especially among the young, or worse, associating love with the purely carnal and selfish. There are many caught in this kind of predicament.

When we have this kind of love, we will spring into action, always with joy and peace. Sadness, feeling lazy and the like are dregs and signs of self-love. God’s love, on the other hand, makes us very alive even in the midst of so many trials and much suffering.