That modern, culturally bound idea or understanding of love needs to be touched and broadened by our religious tradition, by a spiritual understanding of love that sees love as creative and redemptive, that sees love in a ‘trans-personal’ way. Trans-personal doesn’t mean that it is impersonal; that would be a contradiction in terms; you can’t have an impersonal love. Love must be of the person, between persons, uniting persons; but it is trans-personal in the sense that it transcends, it isn’t limited by the individuality, the narrow egotistical individuality of those who are experiencing that love. This is the religious vision of love that comes to us, of course, through all spiritual traditions. It is the religious, deeply spiritual vision of love that we find in St John and the teaching of Jesus in the Gospel. “God is love, and whoever lives in love lives in God and God lives in him.” (1 Jn 4:16-17)
(Aspects of Love 1 by Laurence Freeman OSB )
