Throughout human history, one of the most frequented word in our everyday life is ‘love’. That four lettered word has been on the lips of the sages of all times as they try to explain its meaning.

Many singers and poets have done their best to express its central role in our human development. Yet it remains one of the most complicated words to define. This problem of definition might be largely due to love’s many and endless qualities as well as its infinite expressions in different situations.

In its attempt to define the word love, the American Heritage dictionary does a job job; love is "an intense affection for another person based on familial or personal ties”. 

According to this widely accepted definition, love in order to exist has to be based on certain conditions. This means that we love someone because he or she fulfils a certain condition that we require in the object of our love, before we can love him or her.

However, this kind of love is conditional love which is opposed to unconditional love or true love; which is hard to find in our daily life.

In the bible prophet Isaiah expresses the complexity and the delicateness of love in his imagery of the vineyard.  A farmer did all he could to look after his vineyard.

In return he anticipated a rich harvest which would attract an equally good income. But to his disappointment, the same vineyard on which he had spent a lot of energy and money yielded only sour and inedible grapes!

As a consequence and due to the owner’s disappointment, he lost the love he had for his vineyard and he pulled down the protective fence so that the vine plants may be destroyed by the passers-by and wild animals. He stopped paying attention to it so that the weeds and thorns may cover it.

In his story, Isaiah wisely brings home two aspects of love. There is first the conditional aspect whereby the owner loved and cared for his vineyard so that he may get a rich harvest out of it.

There is also the second and related, mercurial aspect, whereby the owner’s love for the vineyard was based on conditional feelings and emotions which would change from one moment to the next, depending on whether or not the vineyard would fulfil the conditions required by the owner.

That element of unreliability affects negatively our capacity to love unconditionally. Elsewhere in the bible, Jesus tells of a different love. Like Isaiah, he too uses the imagery of the vineyard. A vineyard is leased to tenants.

During harvest time, the owner sends his servants to collect the harvest. The tenants did not comply; they abused the trust that the owner had in them. The owner sent other servants again for the second. These too were mistreated and killed.

The third time, the owner sent his own son thinking that the tenants would treat him with the respect that he deserved. But the tenants got hold of him and killed him.

Jesus looked at his audience and asked them what they thought would be the outcome. His listeners replied very humanly: "He will bring those wretched to a wretched end”.

They got it wrong. Instead of taking up these threatening words, Jesus tells them what God does: He uses the wickedness of such people to further the realisation of his plan of salvation.

Today, a short meditation on the two parables of the vineyard gives us a good understanding of both conditional love and unconditional love.

In Isaiah’s account the vineyard lost the love and care of its owner when it failed to fulfil the condition of giving a good harvest.

In Jesus’ parable the unfaithful servants were not treated to the wretched end that they deserved, but they continued to be tolerated and loved by God.

In our modern society, where people fall in love and out of love one day to the next, as shown by the high divorce rate in different regions, there seem to be some kind of deficiency in our understanding of true love which is comparable to unconditional love.

True or unconditional love should separate the individual from his or her actions or beliefs. It should foster a highly committed relationship capable of resisting all types of negative waves.

In human experience the kind of love that the parents have normally for their children seem the closest to unconditional love.

The parents continue to love their children through good and bad times even when they fail to meet the parents’ expectations. This kind of love, human as it is, has some similarities to the way God loves his people.

From Jesus’ parable of the vineyard tenants, we learn that God’s love transcends the human definition of love to a point that is hard for us to comprehend.

When we choose to separate from him through our own sins, he continues to mend this separation through Christ’s intense personal self sacrifice.

What we have to do is to accept it as a gift and by letting it overflow to others we might be able to love our neighbour with that kind of godly love.

Contact: casimir1958@yahoo.com