True meaning of love

Fr Joe Borg (The Sunday Times, November 8) dissented from a priest who, during a recent television discussion, is reported to have said that people who live together without being married do not really love each other and that a child born of such a union is not the fruit of love. It is clear that the divergence of views between Fr Borg and the priest in question centres on the meaning of the word 'love'.

Ours is a society where the word 'love' is flung around in the media under so many guises that the whole picture is becoming increasingly blurred and confusing, and the real meaning of love has become completely devalued and distorted.

Thus, for example, an unborn child with grave physical and mental disabilities is aborted, that is, put to death, because his parents 'loved' him so much that they could not bear to see him suffering throughout his lifetime.

People with terminal diseases and even without any particular illness, such as Terry Schiavo or Eluana Englaro, are condemned to die of hunger and thirst because the 'love' that their relatives had for them prevented them from seeing them for what they really were - made in the image of God to be cherished and cared for until their life came to its natural end.

It is in the manner that Christians view marriage that the word 'love' takes on its real and complete meaning as God intended it to be. For Christians, love is not primarily a temporal union between a man and a woman who decide to live under the same roof, sharing the same joys and concerns that a life together inevitably brings and having children as a result of that union. A Christian union should go much further than that.

There is a spiritual dimension in the marriage between two Christians which views their union as a journey towards Christ in eternity, which does not end even if one of the spouses is no more. The main consequence of this view of love is that the spiritual state of one's spouse becomes of paramount importance.

How can I say I truly love a man if I do not also care about his spiritual welfare, especially when I remember Christ's words: "It profits nothing a man if he owns the whole world and then loses his soul"?

Surely a loved one who drinks heavily, takes drugs or gambles his money away would be a source of worry to the other half. For the Christian spouse, the spiritual welfare of the other party should be of equal importance and indeed much more. There lies the great difference between those who are married in the eyes of God and those who are not.

How can I say I love my other half, in the Christian sense, in body and soul, if because of our irregular union before Christ and His Church, he is precluded from receiving the Eucharist, the source of all joy and peace for the Christian?

The closer spouses get to Christ, Son of God made Man, and naturally relying on prayer and the Sacraments, their love purifies itself, gradually shedding the faults and frailties that are part and parcel of human nature and getting to resemble more and more the love that Christ spoke about in His teachings.

Thus they ensure that, with their eyes set on eternity, their union will know no end and, throughout the vicissitudes of life, their faith in Christ is their surest guarantee that they have fully understood what love is indeed all about.