We all feel at certain points in our lives the sting of betrayal, and sometimes even have the misfortune of inflicting it on others. Can love overcome failure? This is a question that is in all of our hearts, because we have all seen and lived failures in love. This question also reminds me of a couple I attended to once in marriage counseling.
Pain of Betrayal
The pain of betrayal was evident as I sat across from them. They sat beside each other across from me, while I eyed him nervously, tapping the desk. Was he impatient, annoyed, or embarrassed? She was straining her face to avoid crying. Looking at her eyes, I knew that tears had been a frequent feature of her face lately. They had come seeking help to reconcile after he had violated their marriage vows.
“I love you” is a phrase we are often tempted to bandy about carelessly. In today’s Gospel, though, we see how Jesus challenges Peter to love more (cf. Jn. 21:1-19). It is not enough to love. Jesus wasn’t doubting Peter’s willingness to love, however, he was challenging him to love more. Peter’s joy at the Resurrection of Christ was threatened by his embarrassment about denying Jesus and running away. He knew that he had failed in his commitment to love. Love is one of the central messages of the entire Gospel, but it is not a sugary and sentimental love. It is a love that means surrender and sacrifice.
Called to Love More
In the exchange between Peter and Jesus, I recognize in Peter some of that man who had betrayed his wife and had come to my office. Peter rejoiced at Christ’s Resurrection, but he also carried the deep wound of his betrayal. The last time he had spoken about Jesus, it was to deny him rather than to praise or defend him. He had abandoned his friend, his Lord, and his savior. Just as Peter faced his failure, so too many of us must face the ways that we have loved poorly, even in our most important relationships.
Rediscovering the Meaning of Love after Betrayal
To do this, it is good for us to reflect on what love means at all. The Gospel passage uses two different words for “love” in Greek. Pope Benedict XVI reflected on the different terms for “love” in his 2005 encyclical, Deus Caritas Est. He specifies three terms for love used by the ancient Greeks, one of which he describes below.
That love between man and woman which is neither planned nor willed, but somehow imposes itself upon human beings, was called eros by the ancient Greeks. (Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, 3)
Pope Benedict calls us to elevate love, even the human desire in eros, to the higher calling of self-giving love, as shown by Christ. In the passage we read today, the terms of agape and philia come up. Agape is the favorite term of New Testament writers. This refers to a love of self-giving, without looking for anything in return. They saw it as describing the love of Jesus and the love that Christians are called to live.
As for the term philia, the love of friendship, it is used with added depth of meaning in Saint John’s Gospel in order to express the relationship between Jesus and his disciples. (Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, 3)
The challenge is to love the right things while making sure to love the most important thing more.
Substitutes We Mistakenly Love
We are often attracted to things that are unworthy of our attraction, overcome by this love or desire to possess.
- Love of pleasure – chasing comfort and entertainment
- Love of money – thinking that the power to buy things will make us happy
- Love of self – selfishness poisoning our capability of self-gift
- Love of ideology – making a cause more important than the fundamental relationships in our lives
Loving More
The challenge Jesus gives to Peter is a challenge to love more. I see so many relationships ruined because each person in the couple decides to love something else more than the other person. Often, when I sit down with an unmarried couple that is failing to live their love, I ask, “Are you using the other person, or loving them?” Often, they are defensive and insist that they are living from genuine love. Without the sacrament of marriage, however, some things that seem like love can actually reduce the other person to an object of use.
We, too, like Peter, are called to love more. The pain of betrayal comes from the realization that another person in my life “loved me less” than his or her love of pleasure, money, self, ideology, or whatever it might be. There is a deep hurt in being reduced to a mere object of fancy, pleasure, or convenience. If we want to redeem our relationships in the resurrected Christ, we need to learn to love more.
Starting Anew
That couple that sat down in my office so many years ago learned to love more. They were able to put the past behind them and make sure to make each other their first priority. This healed past wounds and helped them build a stronger bond than ever before. Christ’s love meets us in our failures, not to condemn us, but to raise us up to love more deeply.
Where in my life have I loved something more than the people God has entrusted to me? Where is Jesus calling me to love more today?
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