1. Theology of Love

2. The Problem with the word Love
No word is more misunderstood in our society than the word love...
One word isn't enough...

3. The Four Loves 1. philia (friendship). 2. storge (Family love)
3. eros (sexual desire, romantic love).
4. agape the kind of love Christ taught and showed (Sacrificial love).
Natural
Supernatural

4. Agapao Phileo Peter and Jesus Jn 21:14-19
Jesus asked, “Do you love me?” Peter responded each time, “Yes Lord you know that I love you!” Jesus predicts the ‘agapification’ of Peter’s love by saying he would be martyred.
Phileo

5. What kind of love are we talking about?

6. Philia Greeks used as love for friend. Brotherly love (Philadelphia).
Conditional: Reciprocation
Shared interests
Phila- 'love of', delphia-brother
Philosophy, Philanthropy
Used in NT not as much as Agape.
“Yes Lord you know that I love you”(Peter)

7. Eros
Eros is the love of 'lovers'. Male-Female attraction desire. Intoxicating.
Personal but Conditional: Reciprocation
Eros was the Greek god of love-sensual, sexual, impulsive. Feelings and attraction.
Not used in NT.
Song of Solomon: Eros is legitimate when not degraded and perverted

8. Song of Songs
An allegory of the love between God and His people. For Christians, this has included any or all of the following: The love between God and the Church, between God and the soul, and between God and the Virgin Mary.

9. Storge
Storge, familial love, is a word for the bond that exists between one who loves and persons, animals, and the things that surround him. Natural love of parents, siblings.

10. God is Love(Agape)
Scripture never says God is justice or beauty or righteousness, though he is just and beautiful and righteous. But "God is love" (1 Jn 4:8).
Love is God's essence, his whole being. Everything in him is love(Agape)
The crucifixion was God's great act of love.
God is in a relationship of love (Holy Trinity)

11. Love and The Trinity
If God is not a Trinity, God is not love. For love requires three things:
a lover
a beloved
a relationship between them.
If God were only one person, he could be a lover, but not love itself. The Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father, and the Spirit is the love proceeding from both, from all eternity.

12. We Receive His Love
"He is so full, in fact, that it overflows, and He can't help but love us." C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves Theological Virtues : Faith, Hope and Love (Agape) ‘Theo’-rooted in God and come to us as a gift from God. Baptism-’In seed form’. Needing to be developed by cooperating with grace.

13. The Great Commandment: Agape
On one occasion Jesus was asked:  "Master, which is the great commandment of the law?" (Matt. 22:36).   He answered:  " Thou shalt love(Agape) the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.  This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love(Agape) thy neighbour as thyself.” 
Summation of 10 commandments
1-3 Agape of God
4-10 Agape of Neighbor

14. Agape Most common word for love in NT(“Peter do you love me?”(Jesus)
Christian Love/Heroic Love/Divine Love
Given as a virtue in Baptism (Love/Charity)with Faith and Hope...
“This is my body given for you”-Jesus exemplifies self-sacrificial love, Jesus (Mt 26:26)
Characteristics:
-unconditional
-sacrificial
-unselfish
-unchanging
-active
-antidote to fear

15. St. Paul’s attributes for Agape…
1 Corinthians 13:4-8
What Agape is… patient & kind.
What Agape is NOT… proud, self seeking, easily angered.
What Agape does…protects, trusts, hopes. rejoices with
the truth
keeps no record of wrongs & always perseveres.
What Agape does NOT…envy, boast, dishonor
others, delight in evil, fail.

16. Agape is Sacrificial
A free and carefully chosen decision to love.
Jn 3:16"For God so loved(Agape) the world that he gave his one and only Son...,
"Greater love(Agape) has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.“ Jn 15:13
“In agape you give yourself away, not just your time or work or possessions or even your body. You put yourself in your own hands and hand it over to another. And when you do this unthinkable thing, another unthinkable thing happens: you find yourself in losing yourself.” Peter Kreeft

17. ‘Grace perfects nature’…the ‘agapification’of natural love
Agape (Charity) upholds and purifies our human ability to love, and raises it to the supernatural perfection of divine love. CCC 1827
This grace proper to the sacrament of Matrimony is intended to perfect the couple's love and to strengthen their indissoluble unity. CCC 1641

18. Real Stories of Love Transformed

19. Mature Love in Marriage

20. Conjugal (Marital) Love
Eros + Philia (Agapified) = Conjugal Love
Natural romantic love and natural friendship love constantly transformed, in the grace of the sacrament, by supernatural divine love.
When received well and when cooperated with the spiritual effect of the sacrament is like love transformed from ‘water to wine’…
-The covenant of the couple is integrated into God’s covenant with mankind. CCC 1639
-“Authentic married love is caught up into divine love” CCC 1639

21. Conjugal Love is distinct
What are the distinctive attributes of Conjugal Love? (CCC1643)
Unity and Indissolubility (marriage bond unbreakable until death)
Fidelity(mirrors God’s faithfulness)
Openness to New Life (procreation and education of the offspring)