We all think we know love but really and perhaps it explains why we croon about it all the time.

As Wet Wet Wet sings appropriately, I feel it in my finger, I feel it in my toe. Love is all around me, and so the feeling grows. Its written on the wind, its everywhere I go. Singing sounds better because reciting sounds corny. If love is all around why then do the Black Eyed Peas bewail the lack of love in Where is the Love? Perhaps the answer is also revealed by them in Shut Up. It says, Fools in lust could never get enough of love, love, love. Perhaps, over-emphasis is an indication of our lack of knowledge, evidently, for we often mistake lust for love. We should look elsewhere for how we ought to understand love, if we are not to confuse love with lust. The key is found in the first line of the first reading: Be ambitious for the higher gifts. And I am going to show you a way that is better than any of them. Our mistaking lust for love is aptly described by the present Pope in Deus caritas est where he spoke of the 3 types of love known to the Greek world.: Eros, Philia and Agape. Agape is divine love. Philia is love between friends or brothers as in Philadelphia (city of brotherly love). What interests the Pope is Eros. The one we know of through words like erotic or erogenous zone if you discuss techniques in the Karma Sutra. Accordingly, Eros is unplanned and unwilled and is imposed upon the human person. Imposed? What does that mean? Ask a committed

person who has suddenly found another love. Now you why KL needs so many condos. Fools in lust could never get enough of love; cannot think because he or she is driven by lust. That is the meaning of Eros as imposed. But, what is not commonly known is that Eros, the wild, passionate and imposed side of love, in a Greek temple setting, is also associated with being enthusiastic. We define enthusiasm to be eager and to show keen interest. But, in Greek, the word enthusiasm or to be enthused has the meaning to be in god, to be taken up by god, to be possessed by a god. Therefore, Eros, by its nature is to bring a person updenoting here, that Eros needs to be disciplined and purified. Contrary to popular convention, Eros does not bring us down. It takes us up and this is where St Pauls ode to love comes inbe ambitious for the higher gifts. The love that St Paul writes about probably has more to do with commitment than less to do with emotion. One of the reasons why people are marrying older is because the C word is difficult to live up to. Commitment often has a dont feel good section to it. When you are in a committed relationship, having to say I am sorry is not always a nice feeling. (Quarrel with brother and sister. Usually issues are not intractable, that cannot be solved. The difficult lies in having to say, I am sorry). We start with Eros and through discipline, we progress through Philia and through purification finally arrive at Agape.

Janelle and Nicholas, do you understand why the Gospel makes sense? Remain in my love by keeping my commandments. The commandment is to love one another as I have loved you. The command of Jesus to love is understood by many to be the command to love others. Its almost like loving a sea of people. But in truth, this command to love is best lived out within the context of marriage. One of the Nuptial Blessings over the couple may help us to understand better why this command to love is best lived within the context of marriage. Father, to reveal the plan of your love, you made the union of husband and wife an image of the covenant between you and your people. So, marriages stability is a sign of mutual faithfulness between God and humanity, between Christ and the Church. Love one another as I have loved you has nothing to do with any of the singers shouting out I love you to their fans. If you reflect on this, you begin to appreciate that marriage is a public declaration of your intent not just for this person you are to marry but for God. What a powerful image you present to the world, when after 25 years and more, both of you, through thick and thin continue to love each other Today, the world is in dire need of a reminder that there are things in life that are sacred because we are made for the sacred and for a world beyond this finite world. Thus, Eros, may the passion that binds you together be the one that will propel you to greater gifts, and one of them, to be the best ever

couple there is who will be for us, a sign of the faithfulness of God to his people and the faithfulness of Christ to his Church.