How to fall in love

FALLING in love is certainly not only a pastime, nor a sideline, nor
a fling. It’s the main thing, the main course in life. It’s our
lifeblood.

 

All of us need to fall in love, because without love, life would have
no meaning, no purpose, no lasting and eternal effect. Without love,
life would fail to fulfill the deepest yearning of our heart. Without
love everything falls flat.

   

Though in practice we always love one way or another—even if our
loving is defective—we have to realize also that we need to fall in
love properly, understanding such love as going beyond the dynamics of
the emotions and passions that at best are just transitory.

   

For sure, love should not just be an outlet of some hormonal surges
that can get stirred by what we see, smell, touch, taste or like.
Neither should it be just a function of some psychological and
temperamental conditionings and other socio-cultural factors.

   

How then should we fall in love properly? By understanding love,
first of all, as a gift from God that we need to receive and
correspond. Love comes from God. It can only be lived and developed in
him, and never outside of him.

   

Let’s stop deluding ourselves by thinking that we can generate love
by ourselves. We can only love when we receive first the gift of love
from others.

   

These others can be, from a chronological point of view, first, our
parents, then our siblings, relatives and friends, etc. Only then can
we learn how to love others. But viewed from a bigger perspective of
love in its ultimate dimensions, we actually receive love first, in
the absolute sense, from God.

   

It is God who loves us first. That’s why in his first letter, St.
John said: “In this is charity—not as though we had loved God, but
because he has first loved us, and sent his Son to be a propitiation
for our sins.” (4,10)

   

We have to understand that we need to tackle love first of all in its
theological sense before it is considered from other valid but
incomplete and imperfect viewpoints. That would be putting love in its
proper framework and context.
    
   

That’s usually our problem. Many of us are still allergic to seeing
things in life in a theological way, allowing faith to shed light on
what our senses can discern and on what our intelligence can
understand.

   

To fall in love properly therefore entails going to God first. That
is why we need to learn to pray, to enter into a very personal and
intimate relationship with him, and this usually takes place first of
all in our mind and heart, in our thoughts and desires.

   

We need to see to it that these basic human operations are anchored
on God and are inspired by his love for us, that is, his care for us,
the truth that he teaches us, his way of doing things that gives us an
idea of how our virtues ought to be developed.

   

Definitely, we need to do some disciplining and controlling of our
thoughts, imagination, feelings, etc. We just should not allow them to
go on their own without the guidance of faith and the drive of charity
that comes from God.

   

Indeed, a lot of training is needed here, if not, continuing struggle
and combat, since we cannot deny the fact that we are beset with
weakness and a certain attraction to evil, if not outright malice.

   

Besides, temptations are all around us. Loving therefore involves
suffering, a certain measure of pain, anguish, tension. These should
not dampen our spirits. We should rather consider them as elements
that add fun and excitement and suspense in our life.

   

The liturgical season of Lent is a good occasion to go deeper in the
skills of spiritual combat and what is known as ascetical struggle,
aside from the fact that it is meant mainly to arouse in us the spirit
of penance.

   

This spirit of penance is also as aspect of true love. Where there is
love, the desire to make up for our past mistakes, falls, offenses,
etc., also would come naturally to us. And yet this desire for penance
is done in joy and peace, knowing that it is precisely out of love
that we do it.

   

Proper loving, while it is also abiding, is never showy. Neither does
it engender in us the mentality or feelings of a victim. Loving is the
assertion of freedom. We do things because we want to.