What does it mean to love someone intensively?

[fakename]

That is, what does intensive love mean and why does it exist? How does one reconcile it with absolute love?

That is, what does it mean to say, “we love God absolutely but less intensively, while we love our family less absolutely but more intensively”?

Intensive seems to mean “the degree of distance b/t two things”. So does that mean that our love is proportioned to both distance and the objective reality too?

And if so, how does one reconcile these two loves, since they seem too contrary to each other: If all actions and if all emotions should be proportioned to reason, and if you have more reasons to love God then anything else, then shouldn’t you always be brimming with joy at the idea of God, and utterly cold to the idea of anything else? How to reconcile these two?

 

[Pfaffenhoffen]

That is, what does intensive love mean and why does it exist? How does one reconcile it with absolute love?

That is, what does it mean to say, “we love God absolutely but less intensively, while we love our family less absolutely but more intensively”?

Intensive seems to mean “the degree of distance b/t two things”. So does that mean that our love is proportioned to both distance and the objective reality too?

And if so, how does one reconcile these two loves, since they seem too contrary to each other: If all actions and if all emotions should be proportioned to reason, and if you have more reasons to love God then anything else, then shouldn’t you always be brimming with joy at the idea of God, and utterly cold to the idea of anything else? How to reconcile these two?

I think the rule of thumb of love is to serve the other. Till death if necessary.

 

[Hadrianus]

I think “intensive” carries the connotation of strong emotional feeling which may not even require much of an act of the will. Absolute love is an act of the will. Some saints have felt both for God, but many others have not. To fell intensive love for God is a particular grace. Mother Teresa admitted that she spent years in a dark night in which she could feel nothing in the way of sensible love for God, a common experience of even the holiest people. That too is actually a grace conferred for the benefit of the soul, but not an easy one.

 

[sw85]

This is not to my knowledge a phrase used in any Church documents.

I cannot define for you the theological significance of a phrase you just made up.

 

[fakename]

“I cannot define for you the theological significance of a phrase you just made up.”

check the Summa Theologica -it’s in there when Aquinas treats on the order of charity.