Pro Choice?

"There's a difference between like and love, because I like my Sketchers, but I love my Prada backpack."
"But... I love my sketchers..."
"That's because you don't have a Prada backpack." - Ten Things I Hate About You

"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why do you want to marry her?"
"I love her, sir."
"But do ya like her?... When her mother and I were married, I didn't love her. I liked her well enough. Then, one day I realized I loved her." - Shenandoah

"Love is not an emotion; it is a choice." - Unknown (to me, at least... first heard it from Kathleen)

Ah, and that is the choice of which I speak. You thought I was talking about abortion, didn't you?

I apologize in advance: I'm delirious with fever and, though I have yet to take my Nyquil, I am also nursing a hot cider and brandy (and may nurse another one before I finish... I could use a maid to make these for me right about now... sometimes, a man just needs a maid).

As you can see, I'm liable to wander and wax poetic. Again, I apologize.

I think those quotes up there sum up some things quite nicely. There are, of course, different kinds of love. English has done a horrendous job of preserving these differences. Charity, which once meant Divine love (from Caritas), has come now to mean a corporal work of mercy, which is indeed an act of Divinely inspired love (or perhaps of human-inspired quest for reputation), but the word no longer describes the thing itself. Likewise, there has been a debasement of the difference between physical love and emotional love (indeed, the lines have blurred to the point where we could say that in many cases people assume the following: lust = love), and like Brick, we often find ourselves throwing the word "love" around without ever giving thought to its meaning.

Let me first talk about like, then. To like someone is to feel an emotional attraction to them. When we find joy in someone's presence, we like them. Sometimes this means that our own happiness comes to depend on the happiness of another, and we are natural friends in the Aristotelian sense. (I say natural, here, because in the Divine sense our happiness ought to depend always on the Divine Happiness of others, but more on that later).

One must not like another person, however, in order to love that person. Christ, certainly, loved the entire world, including the money-changers in the temple, enough to sacrifice His life. Yet certainly he did not display a liking for them when he drove them from the temple and overturned their tables. He did not need to desire their company in order to love them.

This is why, as Jimmy Stewart said in Shenandoah, it is important to like someone before you marry them. I can say I love someone, but in what way am I speaking? There are many people whom I love (I hope). They are family and friends, some of them are merely acquaintances, some are brothers and sisters in the faith and some are not. Certainly, I ought to love all men and women, but I am imperfect (again, more on this in a moment). Marriage requires not merely that one love another person, but ideally that you also like that person. You need not like that person all the time, but if you marry someone that you don't like from the outset, are you not playing the part of a fool?

That brings me to something Fr. Rick said at Theology on Tap in November. When asking his mother about her relationship with his then dead father, she told him, "You know, son, there were times I didn't even like your father, and there were times when I'm sure he didn't like me." The point being that, while it may be important to like someone, marriage certainly involves much more. Marriage requires Charity, in the original sense.

Charity is twofold. First, one must make a choice to love. Love is not first an emotion one feels, but rather a choice to do always what is in the best interest of another. Charity is also a grace. God loves us with his Divine Love, and he asks us, calls us, indeed begs us and requires us, to act with the same love towards others, and if we make the Choice to love as we are called, then God grants us the grace to do so with purity of heart and goodwill. We might be charitable without liking a person. Yet look into the eyes, and see the grace of God standing before you. You have been given an opportunity to sacrifice yourself for God - to lay yourself down, in however small a way - just as Christ laid himself down for you. Therefore swallow your pride and revulsion, and Love, as God has loved you.

It is a blessing to be with those whom we like, to find joy in their presence and to know that we are children of God. It is an even greater blessing to receive the grace to love when we do not like, to swallow our resentment, anger, and prejudice, and to do God's will.

There is one choice to make. To fail is to submerge yourself in selfishness. Do not succumb to the lie that what you want is the ultimate good. Sacrifice your life, whether it be for a child you did not want, for a person you do not like, for an enemy, for a friend. Lieg sich, gerne, vor einem Zug hin.

Then you will begin to understand the words:

True love will never fade
True love will never fade
True love will never fade