Three Kinds of Love - Venerable Fulton Sheen

I have all my young friends in the $25 seats I was talking in upstate New York on one occasion I went into the barber shop in the afternoon of the lecture the barber did not recognize me he said are you going to that lecture tonight by Bishop Sheen I said yes he said do you have a ticket said no I don't well he said all the tickets have been sold you probably will have to stand I said you know it's a peculiar thing that every time I go to hear that man talk I always have to stand I overheard a conversation on the plane the other day to emaan in front of me and one woman said to the other oh what a beautiful diamond you have mrs. Plotnik yes mrs. blotnick said it's a 40 carat diamond I'd love to have a diamond like that knows that mrs. Blatnick is like the Hope Diamond it has a curse on it what's the curse mr. Plotnik in a certain parish a couple had taken a lottery ticket and they won the husband however was getting along in years and was suffering from heart trouble and the wife was afraid that if she told her husband that he had won $50,000 that he would really die of heart trouble so she went to the pastor and she said father I wish you would break the news to him in such a way that it would not kill him so the pastor spoke about many odd things and finally he said to the man suppose you won fifty thousand dollars in a lottery what would you do with it he said I give it to you father and the priest drop dead you I mean here's a story for the little children as a restaurant in New York that promises to give a thousand dollars to anyone who can order something they do not have in the restaurant this man went in and ordered an elephant ear on raisin bread the waiter said do you want an Indian elephant ear or an African elephant ear always that I don't care as long as it's an elephant ear on raisin bread the waiter came back with a thousand dollars he said you didn't have the elephant ear oh yes we had that but we didn't have the raisin bread there perhaps is no word more often used in our language than the word love and today it is so often stated anything is alright provided you love now let me tell you that is not true because love is not quite that simple unfortunately we have only one word in the English language for love and think of the ways we have to use it I love the New York Mets I love pickles I love chickens I love God see how confusing it is the Greeks had three different words for love and I'm going to give you those three Greek words tonight I asked Monsignor before I came out how many in his parish and in this area did he think had forgotten their classical Greek he said not over 12 so if the rest of you will excuse I will interpret for that those 12 the meaning of the three-week words the first Greek word for lovers eros e r OS eros it simply means friendship human love eros was that little Greek God that used to shoot arrows into the earth to make the earth fertile eros was not something that that pushed us toward an object it was something that pulled us it was attractive for example the love of a person the love of art the love of philosophy the love of the good life all that was arrows to give you an example of that love here is the engagement of GK Chesterton if there are any unmarried men in audience who have not yet proposed and would intend to I would suggest that they take this down in shorthand and all of you married women will regret that your proposal was not in this language Chesterton wrote to his future wife or spoke to her and said there are four great lamps of Thanksgiving burning before me the first that I was born out of the same earth as you two I have tried to love everything in the universe as a remote preparation for loving you three I have never run after strange women you cannot understand how much this prepares a man for true love for my life ends here it has led me to you that is eros I once asked a husband what he would like to be if he could come back to this earth two years after he died and he said my wife second husband and that is eros and I once heard a man pay a toast to his wife a table you have to wait until the end of this or it's the kind of a shocking toast he raised his glass and said here's to a face that would stop a clock and bid all time standstill to contemplate her beauty that's arrows then came fried Freud changed eros into the erotic then eros meant sexy and this come became then the modern understanding of love the Greeks never intended that that kind of love should so degenerate and the new erotic love takes the fig leaf once used to be put in Greek sculpture over the secret parts of man and woman and it puts it over the face so that the person is not loved but only the experience you drink the water you'll forget the glass and this is modern love arrows erotic rather now we come to the second Greek word for love and you all know it everyone it is philia ph IL IA you know philia because you know philadelphia adele force in greek is brother and filial love and philadelphia is the city of brotherly love philanthropic filial love and throw postman love of humanity philia is not a love a person for person philly as a love for all humanity regardless of race creed color simply because people are made to the image and likeness of God that is philia now you say but I can't like everyone that's true because liking is in the emotions in the feelings but we can love everyone because love is in the will and it can be commanded and our Blessed Lord said a new commandment I give you that you love one another you understand the difference now between liking and loving I can make it a little clearer this way I don't like chicken I'm senior head chicken for dinner one day now I don't I don't I like chicken well because when I was a boy my father used to send me out to a farm that he owned about 30 miles outside of the city and the tenant farmer in order to get in good with the shiiin kids gave us chicken in those days every day except Friday so that in the course of my young life I arraigned the next a forty-eight thousand three hundred and ten hens at night I don't have nightmares I have night hens I have visions of headless chicks squirming and barnyard dust so I don't like chicken but if you invited me to dinner and you had only chicken and you would have been very embarrassed if I didn't eat I would eat the chicken I would love it because I could command myself to eat it that's the difference between liking and loving we may not be able to like everyone we can love them we can get above our emotional attitudes there was a novelist in Russia at the close of the last century by the name of Dostoyevsky who gave us an interesting story about this kind of love it seems as if an angel went down to hell and asked an old woman in Hell have you ever in your life done a good deed for anyone she said yes once I gave a carrot to a beggar very well said the angel I am going to let down a carrot into hell and you get hold of it and I will pull you out the angel that down that carrot and you already grabbed hold of it and the angel began pulling out the old lady and of course thousands of people grabbed hold of the old lady to get out of hell Jesus get off there's this for me and then they all fell back into hell because there was no love of fellow man I once asked a missionary in the Pacific island what was the greatest virtue of the people well is that I can tell you the greatest virtue in terms of the greatest vice it is the sin of Kaipo the sin of eating alone they would go without food for three or four days until they found someone to share it that is philia an East Indian by the name of sing a Christian wanted to go into Tibet to evangelize he needed a guide to take him over the Himalaya Mountains and then gone up a short distance and they were cold and tired and they sat down on the snow and singing said to the Tibetan guide I think I hear someone moaning down there in the crevice the Tibetan guide said don't be silly were almost dead ourselves but saying found a man in the crevice crevice pulled him out took him to the village beneath and was refreshed by that act of charity came back and found that the Tibetan guide was where he left him frozen to death he had not warmed himself by an act of charity this is a supreme act of philanthropy I told you about this friend of mine was 14 years in the communist prison and he was so much beaten by the Communists that he developed lung trouble and tuberculosis and was considered at one time the sickest man in the prison a new prisoner was brought in who hid in his heel a lump of sugar he took the lump of sugar out of the heel in prison and said to the other prisoners who needs this most and they said give it to Richard worm brand it was given to my friend and he said I immediately thought of others who needed that sugar I hadn't seen sugar in six years but I put the sugar on the bed next to me two years later that sugar had gone the wrong of all the prisoners and came back again to his bed and then he started runnin other-- round imagine all these victims of the Communist persecution in their adversity being so devoted one to another about eight years ago I was on a plane going from New York to Chicago and as the plane took off the stewardess sat down alongside of me she was a ravishingly beautiful girl celibacy doesn't blind us you know I can look at the menu without ordering she said do you remember me I said no I don't I ought to but I don't well she said two years ago on this plane i sat with you for 20 minutes now remember every word you said what did I say well you began by saying you are a very beautiful girl did you know that of all the gifts that God gives the one that he gets back last and least of all is the gift of beauty he gives money and owners use it for the poor gives the gift of song people sing for his glory but too often when God gives Beauty gets back nothing but a pile of old bones so in as much as you are so exceptionally endowed why don't you give your beauty to people who have never seen anything beautiful that's what you said well I said that sounds just exactly like me that's what I would say she said I've had two years to think it over and now I'm ready to do anything when now all right come to my office and I will tell you where you were going you said tell me now I'm ready to go all right you were going to a leper colony in Vietnam so I sent her to a leper colony in Vietnam she had a little Jeep drives around the villages and searches particularly under bridges because when lepers are driven out of villages they hide under the bridges and then she takes them to a leprous area man with a doctor cares for these people and in one of her letters she said I do not know whether they ever think that they are looking at anything beautiful but I know that I am the gratitude of these good people this is philia a second kind of love now we come to the third I was just looking at my watch to see how long I've been talking I've been talking about over twenty minutes and you know it's amazing isn't it the way they stay awake I don't understand it I know if I were down there listening to me I would go to sleep there was an Irish family my dear young people who moved from Dublin to Boston and one of the sons moved to Chicago the father died in Boston and the son in Chicago wired his brother in Boston and said what were father's last words and the telegram came back father had no last words mother was with him to the end so you probably wonder whether father has last words now we're coming to the third read word and there's no English equivalent for this so you have to learn the word a G a PE agape or agape as it is sometimes pronounced a G a PE it was used before Christ but never with any fixed meaning but when a new love came to this earth the love of God for man the word eros would not do the word philia would not do so the Holy Spirit inspired the New Testament writers to seek about for some other word that would Express this abounding boundless love of God for man and they hit upon the word agape Naga pine in the verb form and is used 250 times in the New Testament the reading that you are tonight from John if you went into the original Greek you would find that that word was agape love pick up the 13th chapter of Saint Paul's first letter to the Corinthians the whole thirteenth chapter is on love is the most beautiful passage on love in the world and the Greek word is the one I gave you you see we had to have a new word the world had never thought of sacrificial love is easy to love those who love you as our Lord said but to love when you're unloved that's heroic God loves me now I am not particularly lovable and God loves you now maybe two or three of you will admit to that you're not particularly lovable either but God loves you anyway why does he love you why does he love me he puts his love into us that's why therefore we become lovable as a mother for example we'll put our love into a child regardless of what that child is whether useful or not so God puts his love into us to give you an example of what this love is like because it's so unearthed II suppose a lifeguard at a beach is asked if there was a very beautiful girl rounding out there on the surf would you risk your life to save her he very likely would say yes I would I would particularly if she's very beautiful I would risk my life or suppose there's a person out there dying in the surf who did you and your family a lot of harm would you rescue that person he would think about it now that's the way God loved us when we were unlovable when we were his enemies he loved us suppose this were a courtroom the judges here seated on the bench before him is his own son who committed murder there is no doubt whatever of the son's guilt he had murdered a boy the father is bound to execute justice and he condemns his son to death immediately after rendering the sentence he steps down from the bench and says to her son I will die for you that would be mercy he would be just when he was sentencing him to death merciful when he took his grace that is what God does for us but that is not the total picture suppose at the moment that the son was condemned to death that the boy who had been murdered walked in alive the son would say you say that I killed this boy you sentence me to death there's no murders he's alive I demand to be free and so we can say we have been guilty of the death of Christ we nailed him to that cross as I look at him I see there my own life my autobiography has been written the pen the nails the blood the ink his skin the parchment I'm guilty of that death and on Easter Sunday morning when he rises from the dead I can say see he's alive I'm free that's the meaning of Huckabay love now come back to what I said at the beginning is it true now than anything is alright provided to love know what kind of love here are erotic philia agape and this is the love to which we are committed not just a sentimental love but the love for the unlovable for those who are anti love it is interesting I don't know no should I go into this or not so the story of st. Peter well I was going to conclude but I will go into this love scene I was at the spot myself as a matter of fact you have a picture of it I was at the Sea of Galilee where there are two great rocks the Sunday after Easter our Blessed Lord appeared at that spot because the Gospel of John tells us that our Lord came to the shore where there was a fire and bread near the fire seven men were fishing in the boat our Lord said to them have you caught anything now remember this is the Sunday after the resurrection keep that in mind the Sunday after the resurrection they could dimly perceive in the morning mist to figure and John said it's the Lord there is an Lord and Peter was there and even he been naked in the boat and he put something around you plunges into the sea and swims a hundred yards to get to our Lord but then as we read the story we find that Peter is back in the boat in a little while dragging in the net with a hundred and fifty three fishes why if our Peter was so anxious to see our Lord that he plunged into the sea why did he go back to the boat because of that fire those tongues of fire were eloquent tongues they were reminders of a fire of ten nights before when three girls one after another came up to Peter and said to him have you been with the master he said I don't even know the man and they reminded him of the night he denied our Blessed Lord he couldn't stand a fire those flames were like the fire of hell and he plunged again into the deep then when he came back the Lord asks him three times do you love me now listen carefully there were two in the original gospel two Greek words that were used in the conversation one word was feline philia the other was agape I'm going to translate philia by natural human love I'm going to translate agape by a totally divine sacrificial committed love conversation is as follows Simon son of John do you love me with the divine totally committed sacrificial kind of love and Peter who had denied our Lord three times was not going out on anymore limbs and he said Lord you know that I love you in a natural human friendly kind of way second time Simon son of John do you love me with a divine totally committed sacrificial love and Peter said Lord you know all things you know that I love you in a human natural friendly kind of way the third eye our Lord said Simon son of John do you love me in a natural human friendly kind of way and Peter was sad because the Lord seemed to doubt the other but the Lord reached down he took the little love that he had and told him to feed his lambs and feed his sheep and this is the beautiful story of the two meanings of love as they are in the gospel and may you carry away and the meditation of this evening the kind of love to which you are committed in gospel you will always think of that word agape when you see it in reference to the love of our Blessed Lord you know my good people we never find perfect love here never every woman promises a man love that only God can give and every man promises a woman a love that only God can give we try to relive the beautiful moments of love but they cannot be relived they cannot be recaptured why because it was not the moment it was not ourselves it was the divine that was shooting through us there's a moment of eternity making use of human love to remind us that our love is not the source of love although we ever get her fractions starks love that's all sparks that have fallen from the great hearth of love which is God when you understand this mystery then you will also grasp why your heart is not perfect in shape and contour like a valentine heart remember the valentine heart always perfect in shape your heart isn't that shape nor yours heart is not perfect there seems to be a little piece missing out of the side of every human heart and that may be to symbolize a piece that was torn out of the universal heart of humanity on the cross but I think the real meaning is that when God made the heart of each and every one of you he found it so good and so fine and so lovable that he kept a small sample of it in heaven and then he sent that heart into this world where you would try to capture all the love you could but where you could never really love with your whole heart because you haven't a whole heart to love with and you'll never be perfectly happy never be whole hearted never be really at peace until you go back again to God to recover that peace that he has been keeping for you from all eternity

Channel: CatholicClips

Views: 93,207

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Keywords: Fulton J. Sheen (Author), Love (Quotation Subject), Ancient Greek (Human Language)

Id: L-vrnkIa2T8

Length: 36min 9sec (2169 seconds)

Published: Mon May 20 2013