Passion

Love is passionate, respectful, vulnerable, and faithful involvement.

“Passion” is the fourth component of the operational definition of love that I have been promoting. Fr. John Joe Lakers, who gave me these thoughts, argued that passion should come first in the list.

It took me a long time to get past thinking that the word “passion” means romantic love. But romantic love is just one kind of love.

Romantic love is beautiful but temporary. It is usually followed by disillusionment, and it cannot keep a relationship alive for the long haul. The word “passion” can point to a much deeper and longer lasting form of love.

Dorothy Day began what she called a “house of hospitality” in New York City in the 1930’s. She deliberately chose to locate it in a slum area of the city, an area characterized by homeless people, drugs, and crime. Her basic rule was to welcome anybody into the house, let them eat there and stay as long as they needed to. When she quoted the Russian novelist Dostoyevski, “Love is a harsh and dreadful thing,” she was surely thinking of what it costs to live so vulnerable to suffering people. But her way of living was a fruitful form of love. Today there are over 180 “Catholic Worker” houses around the world, all following the pattern she set in New York City. Her vision had staying power.

But passion is not limited to such a dramatic way of life. Passion is what causes people to practice a musical instrument many hours a day for years on end. Passion is why people welcome a severely disabled infant into their family and create a life of love around the child.

Passion is a gift. We do not buy it or manufacture it or control it. Passion is “passive.” We get passion from other people. I would say we get it from God, through other people.

We choose to be respectful, vulnerable, and faithful in our involvement with others. We do not choose passion. Something or someone else gives it to us.

Because love requires passion, love, then, is a gift. 

 

[published in Muddy River News, 4/12/2026]

 

Vulnerability

           The third part of an operational definition of love is vulnerability. Vulnerability is when you do not have control.  

John Joe Lakers, who gave me many of these ideas, tells the story of a couple he had been helping to prepare for marriage.

Laura and Mark were meeting with JJ in his office. Mark had been set to graduate from QU in the spring, but Laura was going to have to return to QU for another year. Mark was in turmoil; he had not yet heard from the graduate schools to which he had applied, and he was afraid that Laura might fall in love with someone else during the year they planned to be apart. As the two of them talked with JJ about the future, Mark suddenly broke down and cried in Laura’s arms.

 

At that moment, Laura knew that she wanted to spend her life with him.

 

Later, Laura and Mark were re-living the event with JJ. As Laura described her experience,  tears of joy came to her eyes. His breaking down had showed her the depth of his love for her. Mark’s memory of the event was different. He said: “I never felt so unlovable in my life, and I was determined that it would never happen again.”

 

JJ’s comment: If both Laura and Mark had not been together physically at the moment when they recalled the experience of his breaking down, both of them could have gone through life without ever knowing how different their experience of the event was. Mark would never have known how wrong he was when he determined never to let something like that happen again.

 

Men are supposed to be in control, not to show vulnerability.

 

Our society fears vulnerability. We need security. But if we let security take over our ability to be vulnerable to the people we love, we imprison ourselves.

 

The First Letter of John says “Perfect love drives out fear.” To love is to go ahead even when you know you might get hurt. You ignore the fear when you decide to love.

 

Three of the four elements of an operational definition of love are respect, faithfulness, and vulnerability. Those three are under our control. The fourth one, passion or emotion, requires special treatment because passion or emotion is not under our control. We decide to be respectful, faithful, or vulnerable. The Marriage Encounter slogan was “Love is a decision, not a feeling.” We cannot decide to be emotional. We can control what we do when we experience emotions, but we cannot control the emotions themselves. They just happen.

 

published in Muddy River News, March 14, 2026