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Articles: Philosophy | 'prEma' meeda vyaasam
- Miss ANJALI
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5) Agape -- This is love that seeks another’s well-being. This is a spiritual, selfless, giving form of love that continues giving despite ingratitude and lack of reciprocation. Agape gives a person value by an expression of love for him or her. God is love. Jesus said we should love our enemies. Agape is also involved when we show love and concern for those who are less fortunate than we --the poor, the sick, the homeless, the downtrodden. Marriages are more likely to thrive when each partner is concerned with the well-being of the other. St. Paul gives us a
classic definition of “agape”:
Love is patient,
love is kind.
It does not envy,
it does not boast,
it is not proud.
It is not rude,
it is not self-seeking,
it is not easily angered,
it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil
but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects,
always trusts,
always hopes,
always perseveres.
Love never fails.
Another form of love, which is akin to agape, and which is the highest degree of love, is the love for a Supreme Being, a principle, or a cause that the person considers worth more than his or her own life. It is a sacrificial type of love. An example might be Nathan Hale, executed as a spy by the British in 1776 at the age of 21 saying, “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.” Early Christian martyrs also exemplify this kind of love. In literature, we find another example in Carton, who switches places with Darnay and marches off to his death in the Dickens classic “Tale of Two Cities.”
What is the nature of love in its application?
If you love another for his or her gross and external qualities alone, that love is of the lowest type.
But if you love the other knowing that it is the life principle alone in the other that you love, then that love becomes sublime.
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