Dating: a time to get to know each otherIn the speech to the bride and groom On September 11, 2011, Benedict XVI said that "every human love is a sign of the eternal Love that created us and whose grace sanctifies the choice of a man and a woman to give their lives to each other in marriage. Live this time of engagement in the confident expectation of such a gift". And he specified: "the experience of love has within it the tension towards God". These words are, in a way, a key to a correct understanding of the truth of human love.
If human love is a sign of eternal Love - since we are the image and likeness of God - and, moreover, tends towards Him, it is possible to say that human love transcends in its origin and in its destiny. This is because "God is the source of love," as Benedict XVI said in 2007 (cf. Message to the youth of the world on the occasion of World Youth Day).
Engagement and love of God
The Pope commented that this reality is underlined by St. John when he affirms that "God is love", "by which he does not only mean that God loves us, but that God's very being is love". He continued his message by posing the question: "How does God-Love manifest himself to us? He answered that it is through Christ, true God and true man, that we have come to know love in all its fullness. In a particular way, "the manifestation of divine love is total and perfect in the Cross. Therefore, Jesus Christ is the way for every man, also for engaged couples, because he reveals the love of God".
In "Deus caritas est" Pope Benedict XVI explains how the initial attraction, "eros", is understood as a sign and a seed whose fruit or result achieved is "agape", the oblative love capable of giving life in abundance. In other words, love cannot, in its beginning, be the result of human action, simply because it is greater, because it exists before, because it precedes both the lover and the beloved; God is love, He is first.
Falling in love as enlightenment
In this sense, falling in love is a transcendent reality; it is born as a passion because man cannot manufacture it and also because, by its very nature, it takes him beyond himself. It carries, in its own internal dynamics, a tension that, respected and cultivated, will bear the fruit of a love of self-giving, of oblation. In this way, the experience of falling in love is a kind of illumination that allows us to contemplate reality from the heart of God.
In his message to the youth of the world on the occasion of the 22nd World Youth Day 2007, Pope Benedict XVI pointed out that one area where young people are called to express love and to grow in it is in their preparation for the future that awaits them: "If you are engaged, God has a plan of love for your future marriage and your family. He also encouraged them to dare to love, to seek a strong and beautiful love, capable of turning every life into a joyful realization of giving themselves to God and to others, following the example of the One who, through love, has conquered hatred and death: Jesus Christ. He also reminded them that love is the only force capable of transforming people's hearts, making relationships between men and women fruitful.
Love requires education
In his 2011 address to engaged couples, Benedict XVI encouraged couples to educate themselves in love. In particular, he highlighted three aspects they need to learn about love:
First of all, he pointed out the freedom of fidelity, "which leads to reciprocal custody, to the point of living for each other". For, as he said on May 12, 2010: "fidelity over time is the name of love". This means that love needs time to express itself fully, to bring out all that is good and to smooth out all the rough edges.
Secondly, he encouraged people to prepare themselves to choose decisively the "forever" that connotes love, indissolubility; he explained that it is a gift that must be "desired, asked for and lived". He added: "and do not think, according to a widespread mentality, that living together is a guarantee for the future. To burn stages ends up 'burning' love, which instead needs to respect the times and the gradualness in the expressions; it needs to give space to Christ, who is capable of making human love faithful, happy and indissoluble". Indissolubility is then a matter of an affirmation, of choosing to love for life, that is to say, that it is possible to love forever.
Thirdly, he indicated that fidelity and continuity in loving one another will make them capable of being open to life, of being parents: "the stability of your union in the sacrament of marriage will allow the children that God wants to give you to grow with confidence in the goodness of life".
The Pope concluded his address by saying that fidelity, indissolubility and the transmission of life are the pillars of every family, a true common good, a precious patrimony for the whole of society. And he specified: "From now on, base your path towards marriage on them and bear witness to them also to your contemporaries: it is a precious service!".
Love requires maturity
In "Deus Caritas Est" n. 6, Benedict XVI asks himself how love is to be lived, to which he responds: "(...) love is to care for the other and to be concerned for the other. It no longer seeks itself, it no longer seeks to immerse itself in the intoxication of happiness, but rather it longs for the good of the beloved: it becomes renunciation, it is ready for sacrifice, indeed, it seeks it (...)".
In these words of the Pope there is explicitly the idea of an itinerary, a path of purification of "eros". As I have already pointed out, "eros" must open up to "agape" and merge with it; human sexuality must allow itself to be shaped by its divine model. That is to say, in the Christian vision, the love of courtship must be both "eros" and "agape," although logically this love lacks the elements proper to the specifically conjugal acts that comprise marriage.
To seek the good of the other mentioned by the Pope is a sign of maturity, because to mature love is to take care of the other and to be concerned about the other (cfr. "Caritas in veritate" n.11). Love knows how to wait, seeks the happiness of the other, refuses the use of any person. In this context, a mature couple knows that love is not only physical pleasure and thus can reach the other in the totality of his or her person.
Engagement and purification
At the VII World Meeting with Families in June 2012, the Pope commented to a young engaged couple from Madagascar that the passage from falling in love to courtship, and then to marriage, requires interior decisions and experiences. He explained that love must be purified, that it must follow a path of discernment - which is courtship - in which reason and will play a key role in making falling in love a true love; "reason, feeling and will must be united", because with all three, it is possible to say: "Yes, this is my life".
The Pope evoked the wedding at Cana as an image to express this idea: "I often think of the wedding at Cana. The first wine is very good: it is the falling in love. But it does not last until the end: a second wine must come, that is, it must ferment and grow, mature. A definitive love that really becomes a 'second wine' is better, better than the first. And this is what we have to look for".
In this process of purification and maturation, the virtue of chastity plays a fundamental role. In his address to the youth of the world on the occasion of the XXII World Youth Day 2007, Benedict XVI said that the time of courtship - essential to build the marriage-It is "a time of waiting and preparation, to be lived in chastity of gestures and words. The Pope emphasized that chastity allows "maturing in love" and "helps to exercise self-control, to develop respect for others, which are characteristics of true love that does not seek first and foremost one's own satisfaction and well-being"; characteristics that are signs of psychological maturity.
The beauty of courtship
In this project of love, we must not lose sight of the fact that there will be joys as well as difficulties, which are necessary for this "educating, purifying and maturing of love". "A beauty made only of harmony is not true beauty; it lacks something; it is deficient. True beauty also needs contrast. The dark and the luminous complete each other. In order to ripen, the grape needs not only the sun, but also the rain; not only the day, but also the night" (Cfr. Meeting with priests, August 31, 2006). Finally, it is right to point out that the love of the bride and groom - and later that of marriage - will only become full in heaven, since "the experience of love has within it the tension towards God".
Bachelor of Theology from the University of Navarra. Licentiate in Spiritual Theology from the University of the Holy Cross, Rome.
