Antonyms

As in the case of the portrayal of the themes of faith, loyalty and repentance, the theme of love is also portrayed by the bishops through the use of antonyms. Love-related antonyms constitute 22.1% of the total frequency (163) of love-related lexical choices in the letters. Examples include hatred-love, peace-disorder, rich-poor, human-divine, male-female, husband-wife, action-definition, passion-reason, permits-forbids, altruistic-fools, folly-wisdom, earthly-heavenly, freedom-enslavement, man-woman, total-selective, Eros-Agape, faithful-unfaithful, giving-receiving, includes-excludes, words-deeds, joy-sadness, virtue-vice, young-old, sickness-good health, etc. Text 40 below is an example for illustration:

Text 40:

Love has to do with fidelity. The one who loves binds himself or herself inextricably to the life and faith of the other: sharing fortunes and misfortunes, success and failure, strength and weakness. (LALG, p.9)

Four pairs of antonyms are deployed in the text above. They are: himself-herself, fortunes-misfortunes, success-failure, and strength-weakness. The antonyms are used to emphasize the point that love has to do with fidelity, in all situations, whether pleasant or unpleasant. There is no restriction, whatsoever. This fidelity, which is unconditional, is to be demonstrated to God as well as to one‘s spouse. The choice of the words bind and sharing gives an indication of inseparability and oneness between people in love, God‘s kind of love. The antonyms thus serve to project the theme of love.

Again, in text 41, the antonyms giving and receiving are used to foreground the theme of love and enhance its understanding.

Text 41:

Love is a single entity that has a giving and a receiving end. Neither giving alone nor receiving alone is enough, for love is reciprocal. Our capacity and readiness to give or show love should be equalled by our readiness for and

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receptivity to love. Only those who are open and receptive to love can really give love in return. (LALG, pp.44-45)

Theantonyms deployed here are giving and receiving. In the first sentence, the words function as participles qualifying the noun end. In the second sentence, they are deployed as gerunds functioning as the compound subjects of the main clause of the sentence. Then in the third sentence, the antonyms are repeated as give and receptivity, the former being a finite verb and the latter a noun.In the last sentence, the antonyms again change forms to give and receptive, a finite verb and an adjective. The essence of the antonyms and their repetition into various forms is to emphasize the reciprocity of love, to emphasize the fact that love is not a one-sided affair, but something that is given and returned. The Biblical idea that it is more blessed to give than to receive does not seem to apply here. In the view of the bishop both the capacity to give and the capacity to receive love should be equalled. The antonyms are thus used to communicate the theme of love. The six-time repetition of the word love adds to the thematic emphasis.

Inthe same vein, the pairs of antonyms highlighted in text 42 point to the theme of love and enhance its understanding by the faithful:

Text 42:

God loves us unconditionally…in spite of our sinfulness or sanctity of life, weakness or strength, failure or success. (LALG, p.21)

The antonymous pairs are sinfulness-sanctity, weakness-strength, and failure-success. Each word in a pair is joined to the other with the coordinating conjunction or. The antonyms denote human conditions which the love of God transcends, but which determine human love.

Sinfulness, weakness, and failure denote unpleasant conditions, while sanctity, strength, and success denote pleasant ones. Ordinarily, while the positive conditions attract God‘s love, the negative ones should not. This is where the unconditional love of God comes in, the type the faithful are enjoined to embrace. The synonyms are deployed to stress the fact that God loves humanity despite all odds. It is this unconditional love that made him sacrifice his only son for man despite man‘s sinfulness. The appeal the bishop is making to the faithful here is that they should respond appropriately to the love of God by also showing unconditional love to one another and the entire creation.

101 4.4.3 Synonyms

The theme of love is further conveyed through the deployment of synonyms constituting 22.1%

of the total frequency (163) of love-related lexical choices. Examples include synonyms such as sacrifice-suffering, collegiality-communion, heart-centre, honest-sincere, peaceful-cordial, care-concern, charity-generosity, familiarity-intimacy, emotions-feelings, passionate-possessive, intimacy-tenderness, sacrificial-selfless, gentleness-mildness, loved-cared for, consummate-enveloping, total-undivided, loving-caring, duty-responsibility, closer-more intimate, etc. Consider text 43 below:

Text 43:

In his words and deeds, Jesus demonstrates that what a sick person needs is not condemnation and isolation, but attention and care. (LALG, p.21)

Here, the words used synonymously are attention-care and condemnation-isolation. Attention and care denote love, and so in this context share the meaning of concern, fondness and kind consideration. On the other hand, condemnation and isolation denote lack of love, and its related qualities. By using the love synonyms, the bishop emphasises the need for the faithful to show love to the sick just as Jesus Christ has demonstrated. The beauty of giving attention and care to those who need them is made to shine out through contrast with condemnation and isolation. The choice of the opposing synonyms in the context of a message on love intensifies the theme of love.

In text 44 below, we find another example in which the theme of love is conveyed through synonyms:

Text 44:

Prayer is primarily a response to the gratuitous love of God and it nourishes our familiarity and intimacy with God. (RBGN, p.22)

The words that are synonymous here are familiarity and intimacy. They are used in the context of the bishop‘s exhortation of the faithful on the importance of prayer in building a close and intimate relationship with God. The synonyms are thus used to emphasize that intimacy, to specify the depth of the relationship man can establish with God through payer. To maintain a familiar or intimate relationship with a person is to allow that person entry into one‘s privacy.

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All obstacles or barriers are dismantled, and all secrets are made open. Requests are rarely turned down. These are the benefits the faithful stand to enjoy, if they establish an intimate relationship with God. But the access, the gate, the thoroughfare to all these is prayer. Through the use of the synonyms, the bishop presentshis message of love vividly and emphatically to ensure proper understanding by the faithful.

Text 45 below further illustrates the use of synonyms to advance the theme of love:

Text 45:

Negative [societal] pressure is often mounted on virtuous people to be like the rest. This is a great obstacle to love which is sacrificial and selfless. (TML, p.35)

The synonyms in this text are sacrificial and selfless. They are used as adjectives to qualify the word love, indicating the altruistic and unequalled love demonstrated by Jesus Christ on the cross. The bishop is of the view that negative societal pressure constitutes a great threat to the practice of this kind of love among the faithful in Onitsha Province. He therefore enjoins the faithful to shun all forms of societal pressure and practice Christ-like love in their relationship with one another. The use of the synonyms therefore is for the purpose of emphasising the ideal love that is expected of every Christian as a follower of Christ.