Argüello: "The vocation most in crisis in Spain is marriage".Now that I have you
I know what fear is,
thinking that someday it will end
all this new world you give me.
This phrase from Amaia Romero's beautiful latest single made me sad because I thought, have we stopped believing in love for life?
The lyrics of "I have a thought"He takes it for granted that the love story he is talking about is going to end sooner or later. It is something that the new generations take for granted. The failure of marriage "until death do us part" as a life project is the order of the day, being the common-law couple the model of relationship that is growing stronger. The anthropological reflection, in my opinion, goes far beyond the hackneyed "today's young people can't stand anything anymore" and is rooted in the very purpose of marriage, among which is openness to life.
Children give meaning to indissolubility and fidelity, because they represent a common enterprise that transcends the life of the couple even beyond death. They are those people who come to "break" the relationship of two and turn it into a trinity (this is why the Pope says in "Amoris Laetitia"The family is a living reflection of God the Trinity) and they need to be accompanied by those who gave them life. And I am not referring only to the first years, when they are very dependent, but also when they are adolescents and need clear references, when they are young and need a push to start flying on their own, or when they are adults and need grandparents (a very important figure) for their children. Finally, it is the parents who need the help of their children in old age, thus completing this circle of Trinitarian love.
The sexual revolution reduced the grandeur of transcendent love, replacing it with a vaguely objectifiable feeling that we call romantic love. Taking the third party out of the equation (children no longer give meaning to this new model), the couple remains a circumstance, resulting in more or less temporary relationships and in societies like those of the self-styled developed countries of people who are more and more lonely than one. Even ministries of loneliness have had to be created!
I reject those who think that young people are stupid and will not be able to put the handbrake on in time. There are those who are realizing that it is crazy to throw the house out the window with relationships that never end up filling that inner emptiness. There are those who are openly showing their admiration for those marriages that stay together for decades against all odds. But how do you do that?
Amaia herself, in the same song, pronounces a phrase that could well be the beginning of a return to reason. She sings saying:
...I want to be with you for the rest of my life
and I even want to shout it.
And no, I don't want to give you everything
and even if you still have plenty of desire
and never tire of being with me.
Many have already discovered the disappointment of romantic relationships cooling off after giving "everything" and long for something more lasting and deeper. Perhaps they have yet to discover - I am getting old and with 25 years of marriage behind me I can give advice - that they have never really given it all, because they have always kept something of themselves for the very transient nature with which a relationship begins. It's the same as fast food versus Mediterranean cuisine with natural products and simmered...
Natural marriage as a total gift, permanently, in fidelity and open to generate more life, with all the errors proper to our humanity, opens us to eternity and satisfies the deepest desires that, between songs, even between veils, our young people seem to cry out.
We thought that God was an obstacle to happiness in love and we are finding that love, without God, who created us and left us the instruction manual of his creature in the Gospel, has become small and simple. I have a thought, as Amaia says, that does not leave me alone, and it is that the measure of love is to love without measure.
Journalist. Graduate in Communication Sciences and Bachelor in Religious Sciences. He works in the Diocesan Delegation of Media in Malaga. His numerous "threads" on Twitter about faith and daily life have a great popularity.
