1. What is love? Love is not only a feeling, but a specific path, specific deeds, actions and words. Love allows a person to develop, to discover the dream of his life, to start realizing it. And therefore — to come to an understanding of what I live for, why I was born, what I want from life. If you look at the relationships of people who are married or have been dating for a long time, love each other, then all these elements are present in their relationships in different forms. This is what distinguishes us, humans, from the entire world created by God: we are capable of loving and being loved. We are not the only ones looking for our partner. First of all, God guides us in this way, which allows us to meet that specific person among billions of people around the world who will be able to awaken our feelings and express them. This is a secret, because it is impossible to force a person to love or to respond to love. We are created to be constantly in contact, in a relationship. They are different: parent-child relationships, friendships, boss-subordinate relationships... This can be learned, it can be worked out. But love is something deeper. It says that I, a person, meet another person and this relationship can only be between me and her, because God is behind them. Only man is capable of love. We love animals, but animals cannot respond to us. A mother loves a child, a child loves a mother; but the mother loves her husband as a woman, and the husband loves her. Love in a spouse gives development to her motherhood. God wants our good, wants us to be happy and free, because this allows us to develop. Freedom is inviolable and holy for God, because without freedom there is no love, there is no love. No one can force, nudge, or lead you by the hand and say, "Here's the person you're supposed to love." Through freedom, God allows us to discover ourselves, our most beautiful feelings - love, which helps to find that person who will allow me to be happy. Therefore, love is directed to development, to life. 2. Love or infatuation? It is worth separating infatuation and love. Falling in love is strong feelings, strong emotions that occur at the beginning, sympathy for a specific person, the desire to be with this person, to support him. It can be taken for love. Love can last even several years. Instead, love is something deeper; it is an act of will (which contains these feelings and emotions) that speaks of a concrete decision: this is the person I want to be with. Its consequence is the decision to get married, that is, to change the usual lifestyle. Love is also a certain mental assessment of one's actions in relation to one's emotions and in relation to the other person's emotions: I take this seriously. Not superficially, but as something deep and stable to such an extent that the future can be built on it. 3. Finding a couple: love or selfishness? "Search for a couple" can be a search for oneself, one's emotions; looking for a person with whom I can feel good, pleasant, with whom I can spend good time. This is how emotions are released. I can do a lot of good, but in reality it is nothing more than a selfish search for myself: I need a person for my needs, my desires. It doesn't matter if she shares my feelings, what matters is that I am. Therefore, one must be very careful in understanding and recognizing these processes. Because you can stop only on your selfish desires, the desire to have this person for yourself, because I am in love with her, and destroy the beautiful thing that God gives us: love - which, obviously, comes through sympathy, through falling in love. Finding your match can also be creative in the sense of developing your inner, emotional life. But each person has his freedom. Freedom to reciprocate or not to reciprocate. She has her own space, which no one has the right to enter without her permission and be aggressive towards this space. If you don't direct your "search" in this direction - and it already depends on me, on my will - then such relationships can turn into complex, selfish and very traumatic, because the person himself will be unhappy and those whom he will "search" will be unhappy ", will approach itself. People will quickly feel that they are being used — in particular, by manipulating their emotions. 4. The meaning of Christianity and love A boy or girl lives their life, gets an education, builds a career; but at the moment when they fall in love and begin to enter the sphere of love through falling in love, they understand: everything that has been done up to this point makes sense. Why? Because now I am for someone. I know why I live. A person who loves is happy. In a relationship, it is also important to be physically close, to hold hands, to look into the eyes, to touch, to smell the scent of a loved one - this cannot be replaced by anything. This is what breaks out of egoism, from its closed world. Why do many artistic people in a state of love begin to create? Because it gives an impulse. It's not just emotions: love brings life! To be with another person, to express your feelings to him, that "I am near, I am with you, I am for you, my life is for you." This is actually the meaning of Christianity: my life is for someone, not for myself. There comes a moment in a person's life when he must ask himself: is it worth being born and is it worth living. Neither career, nor money, nor social status will givethe answer is only love, because in love the further path is recognized. 5. What about priests and consecrated persons? Priests or consecrated persons, when they recognize that they are not called to married life, also experience falling in love and love. They discover in this gift what they have to do next, what their further path is, that is, what is the meaning of their life. If a spiritual person does not fall in love with the person of God, sooner or later he will be disappointed in his life. Love does not disappear, because it is not a situational feeling. This is a solid experience of my personality, my life, my vocation with those people who will allow me to be happy. Therefore, love is a gift from God. The wife is for the husband, the husband is for the wife; in a couple, people mutually discover God through each other. In the same way, spiritual persons reveal God through their flock. If there is no love for a specific person, then there is no relationship with God, there is no development. This does not mean that love is lost, disappeared somewhere - it is a crisis of personality, a crisis of life.