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An excerpt from Benedict XVI's "God is Love"

Today, the term "love" has become one of the most frequently used and misused of words, a word to which we attach quite different meanings.

Let us first of all bring to mind the vast semantic range of the word "love": we speak of love of country, love of one's profession, love between friends, love of work, love between parents and children, love between family members, love of neighbor, and love of God.

Amid this multiplicity of meanings, however, one in particular stands out: love between man and woman, where body and soul are inseparably joined and human beings glimpse an apparently irresistible promise of happiness.

This would seem to be the very epitome of love; all other kinds of love immediately seem to fade in comparison. So we need to ask: are all these forms of love basically one, so that love, in its many and varied manifestations, is ultimately a single reality, or are we merely using the same word to designate totally different realities?

Fundamentally, "love" is a single reality, but with different dimensions; at different times, one or other dimension may emerge more clearly.

"Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh" (Gen 2:24.)

Two aspects of this are important. First, "eros" [the Greek term to indicate "worldly" love] is somehow rooted in man's very nature; Adam is a seeker, who "abandons his mother and father" in order to find woman; only together do the two represent complete humanity and become "one flesh."

The second aspect is equally important. From the standpoint of creation, "eros" directs man towards marriage, to a bond which is unique and definitive; thus, and only thus, does it fulfill its deepest purpose. Corresponding to the image of a monotheistic God is monogamous marriage.

Marriage based on exclusive and definitive love becomes the icon of the relationship between God and his people and vice versa. God's way of loving becomes the measure of human love. This close connection between "eros" and marriage in the Bible has practically no equivalent in extra-biblical literature.

Yet when the two dimensions are totally cut off from one another, the result is a caricature or at least an impoverished form of love.

There is a certain relationship between love and the Divine: love promises infinity, eternity - a reality far greater and totally other than our everyday existence. Yet the way to attain this goal is not simply by submitting to instinct.

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