By Damon Owens
February's calendar
carries lessons in perfect love for all of us. The back-to-back celebrations of
Ash Wednesday [February 13] and St. Valentine's Day [February 14]
may give pause to those considering a Lenten chocolate fast, but the beautiful
complementarity of placing our cultural ode to romantic love within the
purifying frame of sacrifice, prayer and preparation for the Resurrection of
Christ should not be missed.
This is a bold symbol of
perfect love in our Christian call to purify eros through agape!
The
mystery and importance of human love in God's Divine plan has been a major
emphasis of the Church for the last 50 years. It is no coincidence that Pope
Benedict XVI's first encyclical God is Love explored the
distinctions and complementarities of eros [passionate, seeking love]
and agape [free gift of self] in our life, and in their profound
connections to God Himself as Eros and Agape. Benedict launched - and firmly
placed - his papacy in the "heart" of man and woman made in
the image and likeness of God.
True love is good. Love is
of God. But not all love is the same. Passionate love without willful direction
to the true good of the other quickly deforms into a using, self-seeking lust.
Self-gift without an inner longing for the good of the other becomes cold,
mechanical duty. Who wants to be used or merely someone else's duty?
This is a bold symbol of
perfect love in our Christian call to purify eros through agape!
The
mystery and importance of human love in God's Divine plan has been a major
emphasis of the Church for the last 50 years. It is no coincidence that Pope
Benedict XVI's first encyclical God is Love explored the
distinctions and complementarities of eros [passionate, seeking love]
and agape [free gift of self] in our life, and in their profound
connections to God Himself as Eros and Agape. Benedict launched - and firmly
placed - his papacy in the "heart" of man and woman made in
the image and likeness of God.
True love is good. Love is
of God. But not all love is the same. Passionate love without willful direction
to the true good of the other quickly deforms into a using, self-seeking lust.
Self-gift without an inner longing for the good of the other becomes cold,
mechanical duty. Who wants to be used or merely someone else's duty?
These are, of course,
merely concepts to those first learning Natural Family Planning [NFP], and only
"take on flesh" for the couples living their call to holiness
in marriage with NFP. Daily observation and charting of their fertility - far
from isolated - must be integrated with into the large and small realities of
everyday life: work, finances, illness, kids, sexual desire, travel, etc.
Knowledge of the only times
where intercourse can achieve pregnancy is a crucial contribution to a couple's
self-knowledge, but it is only a crucial beginning. This knowledge must be
ordered to their mutual love and sanctification through self-mastery. It is
important for couples to see self-mastery as a self-possession that makes
self-gift possible. We cannot give what we do not possess. This is a directing
of our sexual power/gift/desire/drive, not a renunciation, denial or repression!
Eros
will ebb and flow, but the marital pledge of agape is a self-gift that must
always be in season. Whether a couple is using NFP to achieve or postpone
pregnancy, success is rooted in the virtues "firm and habital
dispositions to do the good" that enables a couple to give and receive
themselves honestly in the sexual embrace. This is the real school of NFP where
we "work out our salvation in fear and trembling." Will we
allow eros as sexual desire to rule and direct itself [and us] or will
we choose to direct it with
agape?
Are we even capable of directing eros with agape? When we fail, do we despair
or "begin and begin again?"
This
is why marriage is the school of love: it is where we learn to restore the
great and complementary loves eros and agape. NFP is like that demanding
teacher that draws out the best in us. Only years later do we look back in awe
and gratitude at what that teacher drew out in us.
Perhaps during this time of
year, we can focus on our call to perfect eros through agape. Instead of or in
addition to some renunciation, we can focus on one small, simple, concrete act
of self-mastery to make a more sincere self-gift.
The
calendar gives us something to meditate with Lent and Love in the Divine
Plan . . . and don't forget the Chocolate!
Damon Owens serves as the Executive Director of
the Theology of the Body Institute and lectures around the
world on Theology of the Body, NFP and the good news of sexuality and marriage.
He appears regularly on television and radio and has produced several series
available from EWTN including NFP: Embracing the Marital Gift.
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