2. GOD’S LOVE. AND HUMAN LOVE

Perfection is in love.
The union of human and divine activity is best realised in the virtue that is the pinnacle and sum of all others. At first glance, it seems strange. Some would like to see in love the pure and plain gift of the Holy Spirit. But even a gift presupposes someone.
Whoever receives it appreciates who is not wasted. “Only love appreciates love …” This principle is also true here, at the meeting of two worlds.
God and a person. The love of God and of neighbour is the first and greatest commandment.
commandment (Mt 22:38). All true Christians, he was certain, believe perfection is in love. In the early days, they revered the martyrs because their death is a manifestation of love, over which no one has more significance (com. John 15, 13). Holy Irene fundamentally resisted the so-called Gnostics, «who they were considered perfect for their knowledge.» Knowledge does not save much, but love does. Even such practice and ascetic life would be an unnecessary effort without love. In his Religious History, Theodore describes the austere life of Syrian monks and their heroic efforts toward virtue. In the last chapter of the file, he notes that love is the only reason for all this sternness. It is beneficial to read the 13th chapter of the first letter to the Corinthians again and again, often called the “Song of Love” of the New Testament: If I spoke in human and angelic languages, it would be love. I wouldn’t; I would be like a chirping metal and smelling dulcimer … Now remain faith, hope, and love – these three; well, the greatest of these is love. God’s love and human love.
What is love? Eros – agape
There is sometimes talk of various schools of spiritual life. It cannot be understood as one school caring more about love than others. It’s more about how they imagine its implementation. It is difficult to understand what love is. Holy John Klimek writes, “He who speaks of God’s love speaks of God himself. It’s difficult and dangerous to get into talking about God for the one who does not connect concepts well. Love is a matter for angels. Even for those, it is more or less demanding according to the degree of illumination it is receiving. God is love (1 John 4:16). Anyone who wants to explain the depth of this term in words would resemble the blind man, who is standing on a boat and wants to measure how far the sand goes in the sea’s depths. »Nevertheless, we humans must express our words. The history of the word “love” has taught us all about its meaning. The Slovak term is inclusive. We don’t have many options to express the different shades. Other languages aren’t much better. Nevertheless, in Greek, the grammar of the New Testament, we come across two initial words of an entirely different tribe: ‘eros’ and ‘agape’. The Scandinavian Protestant Bishop A. Nygren also tried to make a fundamental distinction in their meaning. Although we can’t accept his last conclusions, we correctly identified the dual origin and meaning of the word “love”: philosophical and Christian. There are three fundamental contradictions between metaphysical reasoning and revelation contained in the Gospel. 
1. The first principle, which is clear to Aristotle, sounds pessimistic to our ears: God cannot love man, the world, and nothing beyond. We love what we want; we desire it. We desire what we need.
GOD’S LIFE IS THE LIGHT OF PEOPLE. 
There is nothing outside because everything is contained within. Thus he is happy with himself; he loves himself and nothing but himself.
2. The second principle, which Plato developed so beautifully in
His Feast (Symposium) sounds much more acceptable to us: man cannot live without love for God. For we need material things, but above all, our soul longs for beauty, truth, and right. Its fullness, however, is only in God; that is why we love God. Without love for God, we would not be men capable of ideals either.
3. The third principle, however, seems strange to us, it albeit
follows logically from the previous one: Happiness is not in love.
but self-sufficiency. Whoever longs for something does not have it. We are happy about what we have, not what we do not have.
we have. But we love what we don’t have. So, love is an expression of poverty. Therefore, in mythology, the god Eros was born from Mother Penna, who represents deficiency.
These three claims of Greek philosophy are opposed by three,
at first glance quite contradictory truths of a revelation:
1. God is love (1 John 4:16); 2. All love comes from God; 3. Man’s perfection is in love, and therefore his happiness. However, it is inconceivable that faith could teach something contrary to common sense, which contradicts the evidence of such great philosophers. So there seems to be a difference in understanding the very word ‘love’, which can mean a variety of things. The Greek word ‘Eros’ means ‘love’ in the sense of desire for something, as well as requests and needs.