The Love Not-Triangle

“It takes three to make love, not two . . . Without God people only succeed in bringing out the worst in one another. Lovers who have nothing else to do but love each other find there is nothing else. Without a central loyalty life is unfinished.“
~ Fulton J. Sheen

I don’t know what you may have thought, reading the above quote, but my very first thought was along the lines of “Ha, a love-triangle.”
Another moment of thinking and I convinced myself that saying such is far from the reality, even…yes, even on paper as a diagram. Could one have a triangle with God and two people as the points at which two sides connect? I think not. We were infinitely separated from God with sin, and only He could diminish that gap, the relation we have between each other was sundered, and every triangle is finite and the three points are connected by straight line segments.

Can this be thought of or drawn out as a line? It does appear to come closer to reality, if God is the center point and the two lovers are points at the end of the line.
Still wrong, the people are connected to God but at an infinite distance.

What about a circle? The people are two points on the circumference, and God is the center. What if each person was on a different circle – with God as the center of both, and the radii – the distance each is from God – is somehow representative of the spiritual flaws separating them from Him. Now all that is needed is for both people to go closer to God, and draw the other with them so that they might be in a sense united with Him, different in being but also the same.

I myself do not know why I tried to think of this in somewhat mathematical imagery. It just jumped into my mind. It did not clear up the mystery of Love any further. Certainly not surprising, since the works of God are not necessarily to be understood now or even in Eternity . . .

Life is unfinished, incomplete without a central loyalty, and the purpose of life is essentially to love – Ourselves, our neighbor, our Creator. If that loyalty is to anything but God, it is empty and not love but a lie. True love aims for the highest good of the beloved for his or her own sake – to be united with God eternally – and sacrifices whatever is required to that end.

Just throwing a few rambled thoughts out there on this Sunday afternoon.