ABSTRACT
Romantic love loves the higher passion, the spiritual ecstasy of love, not the body. A woman in romantic love loves being swept off her feet, longing for more, to the point of death. "I would rather die" than lose the feeling of loving him and being loved by him. Romantic love is to be contrasted with the Christian vision of human love. It is plain from scripture that God expected–nay, commanded–his followers to be sexy: "Increase and multiply and fill the earth". Christian love is central, bodily, earthy, fatiguing, difficult to find a time for. It is but one means by which God shines the inner love of his own caritas into the inspirited bodies, and enfleshed spirits, of his people. The love of man and wife is also very high and beautiful, precisely insofar as it may be penetrated by supernatural caritas.
