Page 142 - Prayer Book

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Prayer B o ok
them, consume them, and thus erase their individuality,
rendering them a “non-person.” They do not grant them
the freedom to exist as “other.” In this way, the lover also
fails to exist as a person because they deprive themselves
of the ability to be loved as a person by another. The “other”
person is not truly “other” and cannot exist as such, so they
cannot be loved in a free and unique way, which would
allow both individuals to exist as distinct persons. Each
person must indeed be “other,” uniquely different, to truly
exist as a person and to create an “other person” through a
relationship of love. Consequently, human love cancels it-
self out as a love that generates “otherness” and freedom.
All forms of human love are found to be driven by selfish
and self-serving motives, such as interest or the desire to
use the other, reducing the “other” to an object, a “thing,”
rather than a person.
Finally, the ultimate failure of human love to generate
permanent and stable personal existence is death itself.
Death forcibly and definitively cancels the existence of the
beloved “other.” Thus, when a lover says to the beloved, “I
will love you forever,” they are simply telling an ontological
lie.
There is, therefore, an unquenchable thirst in every
person—a thirst for fullness and true life, a thirst for each
beloved “person” to be eternal. This thirst is what is im-
mortal in mortal persons. It is this thirst that makes them
tragically “personal,” as Metropolitan John of Pergamon
poignantly observes.