I Wanna Know What Love Is

On Valentine's Day last year, I posted the verses about love as found in the Bible, in the first letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians. And just a few hours ago at Sunday mass, I found it fitting that those same verses would be the second reading, on the day before the beginning of the love month.

The priest, talking about the said verses during the homily, caught my undivided attention (a rare feat, mind you). He talked about how people refer to love in a way that doesn't give it justice, and how we often say we love someone without really knowing what it means. He's right. After all, how many of us know the real meaning of love? In a previous entry, I shared a quote about how we confuse love with a lot of ugly things. And it's true. Love--the romantic kind, for example--is very easy to confuse with infatuation, obsession, and especially with lust. Heck, I've confused other things with love for a huge part of my life. If I belted out I Wanna Know What Love Is in the past, I sure did mean it! I really wanted to know the answer.

So when do you know then, if you really love someone? It's quite simple, actually, and the answer is right there in Corinthians:

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 preserves.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7

When you trust a person, accept them completely for everything that they are, and wish (and work) for their betterment and happiness without expecting anything in return no matter how hard that is to do... then that's when you'll know that you really and truly love someone.