Pope: Unions other than marriage "based on weak love"
For Benedict XVI, there is a "special urgency" today to avoid confusing such unions with matrimony. The "great challenge of the new evangelisation" needs to be "sustained by a truly profound reflection about human love".
Vatican City (AsiaNews) Avoiding confusion between matrimony "and other types of union based on a weak love". This is the "special urgency" of our times that Benedict XVI returned to today, saying the "great challenge of the new evangelization" needed to be "sustained with a truly profound reflection about human love, because it is precisely this love that is a privileged path through which God has chosen to reveal himself to man, and it is in this love that he calls him to communion in the trinitary life."
Today's meeting took place with participants of an international congress held by the John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Studies of Marriage and the Family, on the theme: "The legacy of John Paul II on marriage and the family: loving human love". The occasion gave Benedict XVI an opportunity to recall how the Catechesis on human love of Pope Wojtyla highlighted two fundamental elements. "The first element is that marriage and the family are rooted in the most intimate nucleus of the truth about man and his destiny. Holy Scripture reveals that the vocation of love is part of that authentic image of God that the Creator wanted to impress upon his creatures, calling them to become similar to it, to the extent that they are open to love. Hence, the sexual characteristics that distinguish man's body from a woman's are not simply a biological fact, rather they are vested with a much more profound meaning: these differences express that form of love with which men and women, becoming one flesh, can realize an authentic communion of people open to transmission of life, thus cooperating with God in the generation of new human beings. A second element characterizes the novelty of the teaching of John Paul II on human love: his original way of reading God's plan in the confluence of revelation with human experience. In Christ, in fact, the fullness of revelation of the Father's love, manifests also the full truth of the vocation of love of man, that can find itself completely only in the sincere gift of self."
Benedict XVI then recalled that in "Deus Caritas Est", he underlined "how it is through love that the 'Christian image of God and the consequent image of man and his journey' is illuminated (Deus caritas est, 1). In other words, God used the path of love to reveal the mystery of his trinitary life. Besides, the close link that exists between the image of God's Love and human love allows us to understand that 'monogamous marriage corresponds to the image of a monotheistic God. Marriage based on an exclusive, definitive love becomes the icon of God's relationship with his people and vice versa: the way of loving God becomes the measure of human love' (ibid., 11). This indication has yet to be largely explored."
For the Pontifical Institute for Studies of Marriage and the Family, this task means "illuminating the truth of love as a journey of the fullness of every form of human existence. The great challenge of the new evangelization, that John Paul II proposed with so much vitality, needs to be sustained with a truly deep reflection about human love, because it is this love that is a privileged path through which God has chosen to reveal himself to man, and it is in this love that he calls man to a communion in trinitary life. The concept allows us to move beyond a privatistic concept of love that is so widespread today. Authentic love transforms itself into a light that guides one's life to fullness, generating a society that man can live within. The communion of life and love that is marriage thus configures as an authentic good for society. Avoiding confusion with other types of union based on a weak love is of special urgency today. Only the rock of total and irrevocable love between man and woman is capable of founding the construction of a society that becomes a home for all mankind."
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12/01/2006
