John
Paul II - Theology of the Body |
The Power of Love Is Given
to Man and Woman as a Share in God's Love
General Audience, October 10, 1984
1. We are continuing to outline the
spirituality of married life in the light of the Encyclical Humanae
Vitae.
According to the doctrine contained there, in conformity with
biblical sources and all Tradition, love from the subjective
viewpoint is a power, that is, a capacity of the human soul, of a
theological nature. It is therefore the power given to man in order
to participate in that love with which God himself loves in the
mystery of creation and redemption. It is that love which "rejoices
with the truth" (1 Cor 13:6). In it, the spiritual joy (Augustine's
"enjoyment") of every authentic value is expressed. It is a joy like
that of the Creator himself, who in the beginning saw that
everything "was very good" (Gn 1:31).
If the powers of concupiscence try to detach the language of the
body from the truth, that is, they try to falsify it, the power of
love instead strengthens it ever anew in that truth, so that the
mystery of the redemption of the body can bear fruit in it.
The fullness of good
2. Love itself, which makes possible and brings about that conjugal
dialogue, is had according to the full truth of the life of the
spouses, is at the same time a power or a capacity of a moral
nature, actively oriented toward the fullness of good and for this
reason toward every true good. And therefore its role consists in
safeguarding the inseparable connection between the "two meanings of
the conjugal act," which the encyclical deals with (HV 12). That is,
it concerns protecting both the value of the true union of the
couple (that is, the personal communion) and the value of
responsible fatherhood and motherhood (in the form that is mature
and worthy of man).
Love coordinates
3. According to traditional language, love, as a higher power,
coordinates the actions of the persons, the husband and the wife, in
the sphere of the purposes of marriage. Although in dealing with the
question neither the conciliar constitution nor the encyclical use
the language at one time customary, they nonetheless deal with what
the traditional expressions refer to.
As a higher power that the man and the woman receive from God along
with the particular "consecration" of the sacrament of marriage,
love involves a correct coordination of the purposes, according to
which—in the traditional teaching of the Church—there is constituted
the moral (or rather "theological and moral") order of the life of
the couple.
The doctrine of the Constitution Gaudium et Spes, as well as that of
the Encyclical Humanae Vitae, clarifies the same moral order in
reference to love. Love is understood as a higher power that confers
adequate content and value to conjugal acts according to the truth
of the two meanings, the unitive and the procreative, with respect
for their inseparability.
In this renewed formulation the traditional teaching on the purposes
of marriage (and their hierarchy) is reaffirmed and at the same time
deepened from the viewpoint of the interior life of the spouses,
that is, of conjugal and family spirituality.
4. The role of love, which is "poured out into (the) hearts" (Rom
5:5) of the spouses as the fundamental spiritual power of their
conjugal pact, consists—as we said—in protecting both the value of
the true communion of the spouses and the value of truly responsible
fatherhood and motherhood. The power of love—authentic in the
theological and ethical sense—is expressed in this, that love
correctly unites the two meanings of the conjugal act, excluding not
only in theory but above all in practice the contradiction that
might be evidenced in this field. This contradiction is the most
frequent reason for objecting to the Encyclical Humanae Vitae and
the teaching of the Church. There must be a well-examined analysis,
not only theological but also anthropological (we have tried to do
this in the whole present reflection), to show that there is no need
here to speak of contradiction, but only of difficulty. Well then,
the encyclical itself stresses this difficulty in various passages.
And this arises from the fact that the power of love is implanted in
man lured by concupiscence: in human subjects love does battle with
the threefold concupiscence (cf. 1 Jn 2:16), especially with the
concupiscence of the flesh which distorts the truth of the language
of the body. Therefore love too is not able to be realized in the
truth of the language of the body except through overcoming
concupiscence.
Linked with chastity
5. If the key element of the spirituality of spouses and
parents—that essential power which spouses must continually draw
from the sacramental consecration—is love, this love, as it is seen
from the text of the encyclical (cf. HV 20), is by its nature linked
with the chastity that is manifested as mastery over oneself, that
is, continence, in particular, as periodic continence. In biblical
language, the author of Ephesians seems to allude to this when in
his classic text he exhorts spouses to "defer to one another out of
reverence for Christ" (Eph 5:21).
We can say that the Encyclical Humanae Vitae constitutes precisely
the development of this biblical truth about conjugal and family
Christian spirituality. Nonetheless, to make it more manifest, there
needs to be a deeper analysis of the virtue of continence and of its
special significance for the truth of the mutual language of the
body in married life and (indirectly) in the whole sphere of mutual
relationships between man and woman.
We will take up this analysis during the upcoming Wednesday
reflections.
Taken from: L'Osservatore Romano Weekly Edition in English 15
October 1984, page 4
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