Can Love Really Last Forever?

We’ve all heard it in songs and movies and novels:

“I will always love you.”

“I’ll love you until the end of time.”

“Our love will last forever.”

Everyone wants that kind of love. Some have found it, others are still seeking it. 

But does it actually exist? Does love last forever?

There’s a sadder song called If We Were Vampires by Jason Isbell that ponders this:

It's knowing that this can't go on forever

Likely one of us will have to spend some days alone

Maybe we'll get forty years together

But one day I'll be gone

Or one day you'll be gone

When a man and woman stand at the altar, they make a promise to love each other “until death do us part.”

It’s true, physical death can separate two people in this life. But what happens after that?

Jesus had some interesting words about this. In Matthew 22: 23-32, some Sadducees came to him with a scenario: 

What if a woman’s husband dies and then she ends up marrying his brother? But then the brother dies, so she goes on to marry the next brother. He dies too so she marries the next, until she has been married seven times. Finally, the woman dies. Whose wife will she be in heaven?

“Jesus said to them in reply, ‘You are misled because you do not know the scriptures or the power of God. At the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like the angels in heaven. 

And concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.’”

Jesus said that marriage will not exist in heaven. Instead, we’ll be like angels. 

We won’t be angels, we’ll always be uniquely created human beings, even after we die. We probably won’t have wings or carry fiery swords or deliver divine messages to those still on Earth. But we will be something different than we were before. And in this new existence, we won’t be married anymore. Why is this?

Maybe it’s that marriage is a sacrament meant, like all the sacraments, to help get us to heaven. Once we are there, we won’t need it. With our earthly cooperation with the sacraments, they will have done their job. We will finally be in perfect union with God. 

But what about the person (or people) we loved here on Earth? We want to know we will see them again. We want to be with them and continue loving them forever.

I believe we will, but it will be different than it was here in this life. 

A happy marriage on Earth is a great gift. But another, even greater gift is waiting. 

In heaven, we will still love our spouse, but we won’t need marriage to do it. We will love them with a sweeter, purer, perfect, divine love.

So, to answer the original question: Yes, love does go on forever. But not like we imagine it in pop songs or Shakespeare. 

In this life, love to your heart’s content. Enjoy it and celebrate it. 

Try to be the best husband or wife you can be. But consider the reality that your earthly relationship is just the wrapping on an even better gift waiting to be opened in heaven.

In a National Catholic Register article, author John Clark sums it up this way:

“Like every sacrament, marriage was instituted by Christ to help us achieve eternal life. And while marriage—properly speaking—ends in this life, the noblest aspiration of the married couple is achieved in the next. It is in Heaven in which couples, joined by God on earth, experience the indissolubility of love.”

As Jesus said, God is not the God of the dead but of the living. We will go on living. And so will our love for those we hold dear.