I WANT to reflect on a word that isn't used much today - passion.
In our minds it is closely linked with the word love and I wonder whether sometimes it isn't an even better word.
Love is everywhere. It is such a universal word. We use it for deep feelings and fairly surface ones. It describes our relationship with close friends and also our favourite sausages.
Passion, on the other hand, still has a bit of mystery about it. It implies a special sort of love, the kind which involves sacrifice and suffering.
The word comes from a Latin word meaning 'to suffer'. Suffering love is not uncommon. Jesus is recorded as saying: 'There is no greater love than this, that a person gives their life for their friends.' That is passion.
There is always a danger of confusing love with desire. Love is to do with giving, desire is about getting. One is selfless, the other selfish. It is quite a useful test of our love for people to ask whether the 'I' or the 'you' is more important in 'I love you'.
Summer is the busiest time of the year for weddings and I've performed quite a few this year. Maybe that's why I have been thinking more than usual about this thing called love. I always find the words of the wedding service quite challenging, because the love described there is more about passion than pleasure, giving rather than getting, suffering rather than self-seeking.
The reading normally used in the wedding service comes from St Paul. He wrote: 'Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.'
Thank God, love is more than passion. It doesn't just involve suffering. It brings pleasure and growth, joy and discovery. But a love which doesn't also have passion in it is a love that is too shallow. -Rev Ken Strachan, St Thomas' Church, Watford.
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