Why I Can't Stand Romeo.


I’ve been on a Shakespeare kick lately. It happens. All these centuries later, there’s just more of humanity and the human experience to be found in those plays than anywhere else I know. It’s one of those things where every one is my favorite. As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, Henry V, they’re all my favorite. 

Except for Romeo and Juliet. 

It’s supposed to be this great love story, right? Well, I never found it really all that romantic. Sure, they get off some pretty speeches, but a few days later they’re both dead. And the point is supposed to be that they died for love, right? But it never really seemed like they did die for love. They made a series of terrible decisions - chief among them being taking advice from their priest - and then died by their own hands. They very well might have lived happily ever after if they hadn’t been so... childish. 

The very name Romeo has become a symbol of a great romancer, like in that Taylor Swift song. Well listen, I'm sorry, but the guy drives me nuts. 

He’s a whiny over-emotional little twerp and he’s a terrible boyfriend and a worse husband. He’s incapable of making decisions for the good of the girl he claims to love. If he could see for one moment past his own desire and angst, he just might find a way to actually make her happy. But he can’t, and that’s why he turns out to be the worst thing that’s ever happened to her.

But here's the latest: I’ve changed my mind about the play. It’s brilliant and luminous like everything else Shakespeare has left us... but not as the story of a great love. It’s the story of a childish love that never got a chance to grow up. Our poor tragic couple had all the emotions, the fireworks and music, but their lives were over before they had a chance to learn how to love and what it means.

Pope Benedict XVI put it like this:
“Falling in love, being an emotion, is not eternal. The emotion of love must be purified. It must undertake a journey of discernment in which the mind and the will also come into play. … In the rite of Marriage the Church does not ask whether you are in love but whether you want, whether you are resolved. In other words, falling in love must become true love; it must involve the will and the mind in a journey... of purification, of greater profundity so that it is truly all of man, with all his capacities, with the discernment of reason and the force of will, who says: ‘Yes, this is my life’”.

The Holy Father isn’t putting down the emotional experience of “falling in love”. God forbid!  What would the world be without it?  Rather, he’s saying that falling in love emotionally is the beginning of the journey, not the goal. It has to grow up into what he calls true love, the kind of love we heard St. Paul talking about in 1 Corinthians.

Every love - be it romance or friendship - begins with the Romeo in each of us, focused on how we feel and what we get out of it. We say “I love you,” when what we really mean is “I love the way you make me feel,” in other words, “I love what I’m getting out of this,” and isn’t that really sort of just another way of loving ourselves? 

Those feelings are the beginning, as Pope Benedict said, of the journey into love. As we progress on that path, as we learn how to really love, we will find ourselves focused no longer on what we’re getting, but in what we can give. The journey of love begins when I notice that you make me happy. It’s true love when I’ve forgotten about myself and care only about making you happy.

Poor Romeo and Juliet are barely more than children when they “fall in love”, overwhelmed by a whole new world of emotion beyond anything they thought their hearts could hold. That’s a great, great thing. That same boy and girl, after some years of marriage, might have learned to anticipate each other’s needs, might have learned to wake up each day and choose to love, choose to live for another, choose to place someone else ahead of themselves, choose to do what will make the other happy.

The pattern we see so clearly in romantic love applies also to friendship, without so much intensity. We make friends because we like being around those people, because we have fun with them, because we enjoy their company. The friendship that lasts and grows, years later, is much deeper because it’s focused more on willing the good for your friend rather than willing the good for yourself. Think about it: how do you know when you've got a real friend? Isn't when they stick even when it isn't fun?

And as with romance and friendship, so it goes in our relationship with God. When we first begin in religion and spiritual life, we tend to be focused on what we get: how it makes us feel, what it can do for us, how it can improve our lives and make us better people. And finally, the promise of eternal happiness that follows. Those are great, great things, and not to be despised. God has designed it this way: they are the beginning of the love of God. 

But we’re meant to grow from there. As we grow up in the spiritual life, we find that we love God not so much for what He does for us, but for Himself, for Who He is.

Paul’s great hymn to love in 1 Corinthians is all about this journey. It’s about learning to love in a way that is patient and kind, full of trust and hope and empty of selfishness. He writes of leaving behind childish things, of advancing in love and knowledge of God until that day when we see Him face to face.

For now we see, Paul says, as in a glass darkly. Likewise we love with a shadow of that fire of charity that is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But learning to love is the project of our lives: it’s what we’re here for. It’s our way back to heaven. It’s the way of the disciple of Christ: Christ, who prayed “not my will, but thine.” Christ, who laid down his life for those who mocked and hated him, whose love was undimmed even when his emotions were only anguish and abandonment, whose love was so pure and true that death could not contain it. As his body, as his disciples, that is now our journey. And that is why it is not a bit of poetry, but a simple and literal fact: Love will lead us home.

Comments