What is love? What is the meaning of life?

There are a couple easy answers to these questions. What is Love? “God is Love.” Or to quote St. Thomas Aquinas, “love is to will the good of the other.” What is the meaning of life? “To know God, love God, and serve God in this life and to be happy with Him forever in the next.” But I don’t think that is what you were asking for. So, in my own words what is Love?

I’m going to take a kind of opposite approach to this question because it provides a unique insight. Jason Evert, Catholic chastity speaker, says something that has a deep impression on me, “the opposite of love is not hate, it is use.” Use is the opposite of love. Then what is use?

Use is seeing something in a person that you desire and doing whatever you can to steal it for yourself, even if it means defacing the person. Use is taking. Use is selfish. Use does not care about morals. Use does not care about the other. Use is superficial, exterior, and ignorant. Use is usually skin-deep, only looking at the outside of the person. Use is shameful and dark, causing those using and being used to hide. Use gets bored. Love is the opposite.

Love is seeing a person and wanting know it and be known fully by it, to give totally of yourself and to receive totally of the other. Love is giving. Love is selfless. Love is honorable, virtuous, and heroic. Love forgets itself in the presence of the other, and would it die than the beloved. Love is deep, intimate, and full of deep knowledge. Love wants total union and intimacy (in to me see) with the other, deeply knowing the whole of the other. Love is unashamed and full of light, causing those loving and in love to be full of life and joy. Love is never bored, because love can always go deeper.

God does not fit the definition of Love, because He is the definition of Love. We did not come up with love and discover that fits that. God is Love and reveals Himself, the definition of Love, to us. This is Love: The Father giving Himself totally to the Son and totally receiving the Son’s gift of Himself, and the Son giving Himself totally to the Father and totally receiving the Father’s gift of Himself. This Love is so powerful and intimate that it is a person, the Holy Spirit. (It does not create a person, the Holy Spirit is not created from God’s Love. The Holy Spirit is God’s Love)

But God did not want to keep this joy and intimacy and Love to Himself, “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Gen. 1:27) Man is created in God’s image, so man is supposed to be a finite “Love.” Man is created for union and intimacy for he is a reflection of God. This intimacy is, first and foremost, union with God, but also with fellow man/woman, with himself, and with the rest of creation. This is the joy-ful, awe-ful, amazing answer to the second question! What is the meaning of life? Intimacy and union with God in Himself and in His creation. Love is the meaning of life!

(photo credit: http://stephaniehatch.blogspot.com/2017/02/god-reaches-out-to-adam-to-us.html)