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May 30, 2018The Institution of Marriage -
A First Lookby Robert McNamara
This is the fourth of a series of articles outlining Pope St. John Paul II's thought on human embodiment and sexuality.
'The very "core" of choosing a person must be personal.' (Love and Responsibility, 116) Spousal love is realized in the mutual choice of lovers, whereby two unique and unrepeatable human individuals, a man and woman, come to belong to one another in a permanent and stable bond. The choice of the beloved is a motivated choice: both a being moved by the good of the beloved, and a choosing of the good of the beloved. It is at once a falling in love, and a choosing of love, a happening and a willing, and both together. Only in this way do we take adequate account for the human experience that love is a being moved by the good of the beloved, and, at one and the same time, a free and perpetual choice of the beloved, a choice rooted in the interior freedom of the lover. As such, spousal love is a definitive 'yes' to the being of the beloved, and a declaration of the goodness of the person. Therefore, spousal love is first a love of celebration, a celebration of the goodness of the human person, the goodness of their creation, and, thereby also, a celebration of the goodness of the Creator. [...]
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