Mutual Love

Does Christ call us to mutual love?

What exactly is mutual love? Is mutual love really love?

Mutual love seems closely associated with filial love (love of brother). Love of brother or spouse is a very self-serving love. In serving someone that close to us, we have the expectation that we will be loved in return. Mutual love is more like cooperation, or maybe the economics of love.

Agape Love

We will compare Mutual Love with what is often referred to as Agape Love. Agape Love is what I call real love. Agape love is a combination of Charity and Mercy. Charity is giving good to someone who does not deserve it. Mercy is not giving punishment to someone who does deserve it:

JP II. On Divine Mercy:
To humanity, which at times seems to be lost and dominated by the power of of evil, selfishness, and fear, the risen Lord offers the gift of His love that pardon sln, reconciles and opens the soul to hope. It is love that converts hearts and brings peace.

from funeral homily by Cardinal Ratzinger:
The paschsal mystery is a mystery of divine mercy. The limit imposed on evil is ultimately Divine Mercy. (Memory and Identity p. 60,61) In sacrificing himself for us all, Christ gave new meaning to suffering, opening up a new dimension, a new order: the order of love.... It is this suffering which burns and consumes evil with the flame of love and draws forth even from sin a great flowering of good.


See, real love is that which is willing to suffer to consume evil. That is the very great love that the world needs, and our brothers need even more. Yet it is given without the expectation of return.

Lets look at three verses:

"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you" (Jn 15:12).

"Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (Jn 15:13).

“For our salvation he was obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross” (cf. Phil 2:8).

These verses clearly indicate the Agape, selfless type of love that Christ demonstrated for us. There is no way that God expects us to return the love that He has for us. Of course, He does want us to choose Him, and love Him as best we can.

An additional verse:

Love is patient, kind, not jealous, arrogant or irritable. It rejoices in the right and endures all things (cf. 1 Co 13:5-7).

Again, it is clearly seen as the selfless variety.

All this can be very confusing because Philanthropy is what people do when they give mony to causes, normally strangers, where filial love is that reciprocating relationship, that "mutually" self-serving love that brothers tend to have for each other

It is not to say that we are not to love our brothers or our spouses. On the contrary, our Monkey Sphere is probably the most critical area for us to love. But it must be seen as a way to take heart in those relationships where we feel that we are giving too much. We need to realize that it is at this time that we truly love, rather than trade services. True love, does not measure. True love is willing to sacrifice to overcome the sin, the selfishness, maybe the real personal demons that the other may be experiencing, if only we knew.

In some ways, a brother or spouse can be the most difficult to love. And sometimes we are so stupid that we find it hard to forgive a wife or brother. It is stupid particularly in light of the fact that it is ultimately in our best interest, although it does not seem that way at the time.

So Agape is a one way relationship, where as Filial Love, or Mutual Love is more that self-serving type. And again, where we are most likely to have to show Agape, is precisely to our brothers, and with no intent of ever having it returned. If any encouragement is required on that front, we can take comfort in the fact that someone else is probably sacrificing, or worse, suffering, for our hidden faults.

* Note: In the passage from Cardinal Ratzinger, it is exactly that Christ by his sacrifice on the cross gave meaning to suffering. When you give meaning to suffering, it becomes a sacrifice