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Coelho> Warrior of the Light Issue 85
Warrior of the Light
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nº 85
The three forms of love: Eros, Philos, Agape
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In 1986, when I was on the road to Santiago with my guide Petrus,
we passed through the city of Logroño while a wedding
was taking place. We ordered two glasses of wine, I prepared
something to nibble on, and Petrus discovered a table where
we could sit down together with the other guests.
The wedding couple cut an immense cake.
“They must love one another,” I thought aloud.
“Of course they love one another,” said a man in
a dark suit sitting at our table. Have you ever seen anyone
get married for any another reason?”
But Petrus did not let the question go unanswered:
“What type of love do you mean: Eros, Philos or Agape?”
The man looked at him without understanding a word.
“There are three words in Greek to designate love,”
Petrus said. “Today you are seeing the manifestation of
Eros, that sentiment between two persons.”
The bride and groom smiled for the cameras and received compliments
from the guests.
“The two seem to love one another. In a short time they
will be fighting alone for life, establishing themselves in
a house and taking part in the same adventure: that’s
what makes love grand and dignified. He will pursue his career,
she probably knows how to cook and will make an excellent housewife
because since she was a little girl she was brought up to do
that. She will accompany him, they will have children and they
will manage to build something together, they will be happy
for ever.”
“Al of a sudden, however, this story could happen the
other way around. He is going to feel that he is not free enough
to show all the Eros, all the love that he has for other women.
She may begin to feel that she has sacrificed a career and a
brilliant life to accompany her husband. So, instead of creating
together, each of them will feel robbed in their way of loving.
Eros, the spirit that joins them, will start to display only
his bad side. And what God had meant to be man’s most
noble sentiment will begin to be a source of hatred and destruction.”
I looked around me. Eros was present in many couples. But I
could sense the presence of Eros the Good and Eros the Evil,
just like Petrus had described.
“Notice how odd it is,” continued my guide. “Despite
being good or bad, the face of Eros is never the same in all
persons.”
The band struck up a waltz. People moved to a small paved area
in front of the band-stand to dance. The alcohol began to show
its effect and they all became merrier and drenched in sweat.
I noticed a girl dressed in blue who must have been waiting
for this wedding just for the moment of the waltz to arrive
because she wanted to dance with someone she had dreamed of
embracing ever since she entered adolescence. Her eyes followed
the movements of a young man, well dressed in a light-colored
suit, who was sitting with a bunch of friends. They were talking
away merrily, they had not noticed that the waltz had started,
nor had they noticed that a few yards away a girl in blue was
staring at one of them.
I thought of small towns, of marriages with the chosen boy,
dreamed of ever since childhood.
The girl in blue noticed me looking at her and moved away. And
as if the whole movement had been rehearsed, now it was the
boy’s turn to seek her out with his eyes. Discovering
that she was close to other girls, he went back to his lively
conversation with his friends.
I drew Petrus’s attention to the two of them. He watched
them exchanging glances for a while and then returned to his
glass of wine.
“They act as if it were something shameful to demonstrate
that they love one another,” was his only remark.
Another girl was staring at us, she must have been half our
age. Petrus raised his glass, made a toast, the girl laughed
in embarrassment and made a gesture pointing towards her parents
almost in apology at not coming closer.
“That’s the beautiful side of love,” he said.
“Love that challenges, love for two older strangers who
have come from afar and tomorrow will already have parted down
a road that she too would like to travel. The love that prefers
adventure.”
Then he continued, pointing to an elderly couple:
“Look at those two: they haven’t let themselves
be affected by hypocrisy, like so many others. They look like
they are a couple of farm workers: hunger and need have obliged
them to overcome many a difficulty together. They have discovered
love through work, which is where Eros shows his most beautiful
face, also known as Philos.”
“What’s Philos?”
“Philos is love in the form of friendship. It’s
what I feel for you and others. When the flame of Eros no longer
able to shine, it’s Philos who keeps couples together.”
“And what about Agape?”
“Agape is total love, the love that devours those that
experience it. Whoever knows and experiences Agape sees that
nothing else in this world is of any importance, only loving.
This was the love that Jesus felt for humanity, and it was so
great that it shook the stars and changed the course of man’s
history.”
“During the millennia of the history of civilization,
many people have been smitten by this Love that Devours. They
had so much to give – and the world demanded so little
– that they were obliged to seek out the deserts and isolated
places because love was so great that it transfigured them.
They became the hermit saints that we know today.”
“For me and you who have experienced another form of Agape,
this life here may seem hard and terrible. Yet the Love that
Devours makes everything lose its importance: these men live
only to be consumed by their love.”
He took a pause.
“Agape is the Love that Devours,” he repeated once
more, as if this was the phrase that best defined that strange
type of love. “Luther King once said that when Christ
spoke of loving our enemies he was referring to Agape. Because
according to him, it was impossible to like our enemies, those
who do us harm and try to make our daily suffering all the worse.”
“But Agape is a lot more than liking. It is a sentiment
that invades everything, fills all the cracks and makes any
attempt at aggression turn to dust.”
“There are two forms of Agape. One is isolation, life
dedicated only to contemplation. The other is precisely the
opposite: contact with other human beings, and enthusiasm, the
sacred sense of work. Enthusiasm means trance, ecstasy, connecting
with God. Enthusiasm is Agape directed at some idea, something.”
“When we love and believe in something from the bottom
of our soul, we feel stronger than the world and we are imbued
with a serenity that comes from the certainty that nothing can
conquer our faith. This strange force makes us always make the
right decisions at the right time, and we are surprised at our
own capacity when we fulfill our objective.”
“Enthusiasm usually manifests itself in all its power
in the early years of our life. We still have a strong tie with
the divinity and we give ourselves with such zeal to our toys
that dolls take on a life of their own and little tin soldiers
manage to march. When Jesus said that the kingdom of Heaven
belonged to the children, he was referring to Agape in the form
of Enthusiasm. The children reached him without paying any attention
to his miracles, his wisdom, the Pharisees and the apostles.
They came happily, driven by Enthusiasm.”
“May you never lose your enthusiasm at any moment for
the rest of your life: it’s your greatest strength, intent
on the final victory. You cannot let it slip through your fingers
just because as time passes we have to face some small and necessary
defeats.”
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