89. Love’s end is union
89. LOVE’S END IS UNION
What does love want, will, seek, desire, hope, or long for? What is love for?
Union is an effect of love . . . every love is a unitive force.
. . . [W]hen a man loves another with the love of friendship, he wills good to him just as he wills good to himself, wherefore he apprehends him as his other self . . . Hence a friend is called a man’s other self (Aristotle) and Augustine says, Well did one say to his friend: Thou half of my soul. . . .
. . . [L]ove moves man to desire and seek the presence of the beloved . . . there is a union which is the effect of love. This is real union, which the lover seeks with the object of his love . . . the effect of love is that the thing itself which is loved is, in a way united to the lover. . . .
. . . [T]he union caused by love is closer than that which is caused by knowledge (I-II,28,1).
It is written (1 Jn 4:16): He that abideth in charity abideth in God, and God in him.
. . . love makes the beloved to be in the lover, and vice versa . . . according to Phil. 1:7,. . . I have you in my heart. . . . the lover is not satisfied with a superficial apprehension of the beloved, but strives to gain an intimate knowledge of everything pertaining to the beloved, so as to penetrate into his very soul. . . .
. . . [I]n the love of friendship, the lover is in the beloved inasmuch as he reckons what is good or evil to his friend as being so to himself (I-II,28,2). (See Mt. 25:40.)
What love desires is not just a feeling, something subjective. It would not be satisfied with the most perfect dream. It wants reality. Its goal is metaphysical, ontological. It wants to become really one with the real other that is loved. It wants the two to become one, separation to be overcome, union to really happen.
There are two kinds of love and two kinds of union: selfish and unselfish. In possessive and egotistic love, it wants to eat or swallow its object: if you love ice cream you want to eat it. In what St. Thomas calls the love of friendship, in altruistic love, it wants presence, the real presence of the friend, and wants the good of the friend.
All loves seeks union. And since (in Jesus’ words) “all who seek, find”; since (in the words of the Hindu scriptures) “you can have what you want”; therefore love actually produces this union, in various ways (marriage, sex, friendship, altruism): it “makes the beloved to be in the lover”, as St. Thomas says. It gives the lover a new being, a second being. When we love God, God literally comes into us and lives in our soul. For although other human beings often don’t reciprocate our love, do not enter our being as we enter theirs, God always does.
When we love a friend, we seek his happiness and ours at the same time. For “a friend is the other half of your soul.” We are happy when he is happy. We are happy not only for his happiness, be we are happy in his happiness. When we love God, we are happy when He is happy with us. We seek His approval, His “well done, good and faithful servant.” We are like dogs to God. We are happy only when we make Master happy with us. (“Dog” is only “God” backwards. God loves to make puns.)
We cannot add to God’s happiness, we cannot give anything to God—except our love. It is the only thing He cannot give Himself. And He genuinely cares about that—passionately cares about that, in fact so passionately that He enters the Enemy’s own realm and endures the Enemy’s worst on Calvary, the Hell of being forsaken of God—not because He needs us but simply because He loves us.
In Heaven we will do to God what God did to us on earth: we will so forget ourselves that we will “reckon what is good or evil to the friend (God) as being so to himself”. The closer we can get to that in this world, the happier we will be. That is “ecstasy”, or “standing outside one’s self”. The next passage is about that.