Abuse, betrayal, divorce, scandal—of late we have had our fill. When dysfunction distorts love’s true portrait, what image of it remains impressed on our hearts and minds? Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Pope Benedict XVI’s Deus Caritas Est (DCE) share a common vision of love, which discards its caricatures and defines its true traits.
ASCENDING LOVE - EROS
In the unchaste eyes of Mr. Rochester, love erroneously meant intensity of feeling, chemistry, eros: “Jane, you please me, and you master me… I am influenced—conquered; and the influence is sweeter than I can express; and the conquest I undergo has a witchery beyond any triumph I can win.”
Mr. Rochester found in Miss Eyre a kindred spirit but never disclosed that he had married a woman who went insane. Powerless to help his lunatic wife, he locked her in the attic and set out on a quest for a soul-mate. When Jane crossed his path, something stirred inside him, and although he knew that “Bigamy is an ugly word!” he subdued his conscience, deceived his bride and sidestepped God’s law—all in the name of true love.
On his would-be wedding day, when the truth was unveiled, the heroine fled. Though she bled inside, Jane held fast to her principles. She seemed to understand that “eros is impoverished and even loses its own nature” when it excludes sacrificial love (DCE 7).
DESCENDING LOVE - AGAPE
Her charms soon caught the eye of an ambitious and handsome pastor, St John Rivers, whose missionary aspirations won Jane’s admiration. But his Puritan vision of love repulsed Jane. “I scorn your idea of love… I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer: yes, St John, and I scorn you when you offer it.” She would lend her services but would not surrender her heart. “He is good and great, but severe; and, for me, cold as an iceberg… I am not happy at his side, nor near him, nor with him. He has no indulgence for me—no fondness.”
Miss Eyre might have proclaimed with the Holy Father that “man cannot live by oblative, descending love alone. He cannot always give; he must also receive. Anyone who wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift” (DCE 7).
Docile to Providence, Jane was neither a slave to sentiment nor a victim of the law. She waited for God’s time and married the widowed Rochester. She was as faithful to her feelings as she was committed to her conscience.
But Rochester fell blind and lame in his Christ-like attempt to save his suicidal spouse. Would marriage now mean pure sacrifice for Jane?
“Sacrifice! What do I sacrifice? Famine for food, expectation for content. To be privileged to put my arms round what I value—to press my lips to what I love—to repose on what I trust: is that to make a sacrifice? If so, then certainly I delight in sacrifice.”
“And to bear with my infirmities, Jane: to overlook my deficiencies.”
“Which are none, sir, to me. I love you better now, when I can really be useful to you, than I did in your state of proud independence.”
Brontë’s unforgettable love story brings light to our broken world and brings to life the Church’s teaching: “eros and agape—ascending love and descending love—can never be completely separated. The more the two, in their different aspects, find a proper unity in the one reality of love, the more the true nature of love in general is realized” (DCE 7).
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