LOVE IS THE ESSENCE AND VOCATION OF THE HUMAN HEART
Mother Adela Galindo
Foundress, SCTJM
For private use only -©
Talk given by Mother Adela to married couples of the
Legatus Organization
THE HUMAN PERSON IS MADE TO LOVE AND BE LOVED
On the Apostolic Exhortation, the Family in the Modern World, no.
11, Servant of God John Paul II stated: “God created man in His own
image and likeness calling him to existence through love, He called him
at the same time for love. God is love and in Himself He lives a mystery
of personal loving communion. Creating the human race in His own image
and continually keeping it in being, God inscribed in the humanity of
man and woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and responsibility, of
love and communion. Love is therefore the fundamental and innate
vocation of every human being.”
In his book, Love and Responsibility, Karol Wojtyla reminded us of a
truth so much forgotten in our times, truth that reveals the essence of
our identity and vocation. “Love is exclusively the portion of human
persons”. Love is an exclusive reality of the human heart. We were
created out of love, we were created to know love, to live by love and
to communicate it in such a powerful way, that it will give life. Just
as S. Maximilian Kolbe would say: “only love creates”.
Love is an exclusive experience of the human person. Of all creation,
only the human heart can know love, live by love and give it generously.
Animals, trees, stones, mountains, oceans…. Simply do not love… only
persons, only hearts can love. We are capable of love, because we are
capable of God, we are capable of freely choosing to live according to
our dignity, as the image and likeness of God, and God is love as St.
John tells us in his first letter chapter 4, 7-8: “Beloved, let us love
one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by
God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is
love.”
As human persons we have been endowed with the gifts of intelligence and
will. We can by our reason, open to the light of faith, understand how
wide, how long, how deep is God’s love. We, as St. John tells us, can
come to know and believe in the love that God has for us. We can come to
know that His love is the source of our lives and the force that move us
to respond to love by loving. By the gift of our wills we can choose to
freely love and to freely live according to our dignity as human
persons. The greatest dignity of the human heart is its capacity to
freely choose to love. It is your dignity to have been able to choose
your husband and your wife and to have chosen them because you loved
them. It is your dignity to continue to daily choose to foster, care,
guard and nourish the love, the treasure that was entrusted to you the
day you gave your fiat to one another. It is your dignity and
responsibility to protect it from all the interior or exterior forces
that oppose love and weaken love.
Yes, my brothers and sisters, only human persons are capable of love and
because of that, we are responsible to allow love to conquer in our
hearts when selfishness invites us to choose the easiest and wide path,
or to run away from the difficulties or the duties that love require.
You are responsible to form your hearts for love, to live your marriage
in love, to create in your homes living schools of love, and to
influence society by building in your own families the civilization of
love. In few words, we are responsible to live out our vocation, to live
for love, to shape our hearts, marriages, families, communities and
society for love. You together with your spouses and your children are
responsible to be witnesses at the heart of the world of a new
civilization of love. Just as John Paul II in his Letter to Families
stated: "the family is the center and the heart of the civilization of
love".
LOVE IS MEANT TO BE LIVED IN COMMUNION
In the Apostolic Exhortation, Familiaris Consortio, John Paul II,
cites a passage from his first encyclical Redemptor Homini, n. 10:
“Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is
incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not
revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not
experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately
in it.”
The human heart was created to love and therefore needs to live this
vocation in communion with other hearts. John Paul II spoke movingly of
the human person’s “existential loneliness” based on the passage of
Genesis chapter 2, 18: “it is not good that man should be alone”. Adam
was the first human person, the only one in creation who could love and
that is why the Creator saw that he needed another human heart to give
his love to and to correspond to him by love. Love is meant to be given
and love is meant to be received. Therefore, a communion of hearts is
necessary to live out the human vocation to love.
In that same passage from Genesis, we can see the deep joy and the
satisfied longing of Adam’s heart expressed in the words that he said
upon seeing Eve: “This one, at last, is bone of my bone and flesh of my
flesh.” (Genesis 2, 23)
We are made to give ourselves to another and to receive another; our
very physiological make-up demonstrates that. And this mutual giving and
receiving is to be fruitful by bring forth new life. Thus we are all, in
the depths of our being, hearts that require a spouse and children for
the fulfillment of our being and vocation, whether that spouse be of the
natural order and the children be biological children, or whether the
spouse be Christ, in the case of religious sisters; or the spouse be the
Church, the bride of Christ, as in the priestly vocation, and one’s
fatherhood or motherhood be a spiritual one.
Since love is the driving force of the human hearts, we can conclude
that love unifies persons… love forms communion of hearts. Because the
only adequate response toward a human person is love… and the only way
to live the vocation of love is in communion with persons... We can only
come to fully realize ourselves and discover our identity by giving
ourselves to others in love… This is what John Paul II called the “law
of the gift”: we become fully ourselves by our self- giving, “he who
looses his life will find it”. The realization of the human heart is in
loving, in allowing his or her heart to have the rhythm and the movement
of love: love has only one movement: outward…Love can only do one thing:
give itself. This reminds me of what the Heart of Jesus told St.
Margaret Mary in his first apparition to this visitation nun: “I can not
contain my love, I must give it”.
Love is to be given, only then can it really be called love. “No one has
greater love than this, to lay down his life for his friend” (John 15,
13). The human heart accomplishes maturity by choosing to give himself
in love. “This self gift reveals… a particular characteristic of the
essence of the person. When God said:” it is not good that man should be
alone” (Gen 2,18) he affirmed that “alone”, man does not completely
realize this essence. He realizes it only by existing “with someone”-
and even more deeply and completely- by existing for someone”. (JPII,
General Audience, January 9, 1980)
LOVE MUST BE FORMED IN THE SCHOOL OF LOVE: THE FAMILY.
In the Letter to Families (1994), John Paul II reminded us that the
family is the community on which society is founded and that is by
nature linked to the civilization of love.
The civilization of love is distinguished by personalism, which moves
the person to become a gift for others and to discover joy in giving
himself. I really believe that this civilization can only be built upon
mature hearts, by a mature humanity which finds full realization in the
unreserved giving of oneself, in the generous and total donation of
oneself. For John Paul, this civilization of love, of which the
Christian family must be the microcosm, is a counterbalance to the
“culture of death/selfishness” so present in our times. The Christian
family is called to be the first and luminous witness to this new
civilization of love at the beginning of the Third Millennium.
The human person finds his or her fulfillment only through the love that
is best illustrated through familial relationships. John Paul II tells
us that for this reason Christ came through means of a family – to show
us that this is where love starts. And if love starts in the Family,
this one becomes the first school of love, the place, the environment
and the context in which each member can be formed and also practice the
ways of love.
Marriage and family are a school – where persons learn to love and where
their hearts can be shape for love. The Family is a school, in the
profoundly formative sense, of all members of the family: true formation
must change hearts.
In marriage the learning is in the midst of busyness, caretaking, the
noise and the routine of daily life with its changing patterns and
realities. The couple has many opportunities to
grow in all the virtues: patience, kindness, self-denial, sharing of
common goods, compassion, forgiving and being forgiven, humility and
meekness, capacity to welcome and generously let go, cultivation of a
flexible and discerning heart, the ability to work toward reconciliation
and the arts of expanding the circles of care, the capacity to listen to
each other’s needs… All of these are part of the arts of love.
Indeed, the marriage relationship is most emphatically a school in the
sense of being an environment in which the arts of love are learned. But
in a school we not only learn about things, we learn to do them. The
family is a school where love is to be put into action, the material
learned is to be practice… Is the school where love is to be known,
recognized and clearly perceived.
EDUCATION FOR LOVE
An important part of this task is educating the children for love,
teaching them to care for others; sharing, about love as self-giving,
according to the Gospel of Christ.The children have to be taught the
primacy of love, the values of self-sacrifice, of seeking the common
good, and the best school for this is a family where parents put this
into practice. The children need to learn to reverence and welcome new
life, to see the joy of openness to life. Children need to see
discipline as formation, and to be helped to become self-disciplined.
This must be learned from parents who give example of moderation in all
areas; parents who place their priorities in the values of the heart.
Children must become tender and compassionate towards others, and that
is so easy to imitate when they see parents who cherish each other, who
communicate, who share their lives as "one flesh", and as “one heart”.
Children are to be educated in purity, in pure love… in real, concrete,
strong and pure ways of showing affection. This education for love will
formed mature and stable personalities, virtuous hearts, loving hearts.
Children need to be formed in the "school of the virtues", and virtues
in the family need to be taught, honored and practically lived.
LOVE MUST BE PUT TO THE TEST AND LOVE MUST CONQUER
“Set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm; for stern as
death is love, its flames a blazing fire. Deep waters can not quench
love, nor floods sweep it away …. Love is stronger than death”. (Song of
Songs, 8).
Love must be put to the test to prove its authenticity. Love must go
through the force of winds to prove how strong are its roots. There are
many good things which are part of a relationship: physical attraction,
desire for company, idealized affection, common interests, etc. All
those are good and necessary, but are not the rock upon which a
committed love can be based: love must be based on fidelity, and
fidelity is revealed and matured at the foot of the Cross.
Love is a daily conquest… love is a daily task… love is a constant
choice. Genuine and solid love, authentic love is never achieved at
once. It grows, it matures, it develops by being chosen at all times,
and it obtains a particular strength and vigor when it is more difficult
to choose it. “Love is never something ready made, something merely
given to man and woman; it is always at the same time a “task” which
they are set. Love should be seen as something which in a sense never
“is” but is always only becoming, and what it becomes depends upon the
contribution of both persons and the depth of their commitment”. (Karol
Wojtyla, Love and responsibility, p. 139)
1. Love is put to test when the fire and passion of the beginnings seem
to have lost some strength. When the sensual and emotional reactions
themselves grow weaker and sexual attraction as such loose its effect.
That is the time, when the inner force of love can become stronger, when
the value of the person, when the totality of the heart of the other,
becomes so visible, so tangible, because “when the outer self is wasting
away, the inner self can be renewed (2 Cor 4, 16)... That is the time,
when the heart of the other is contemplated in a new dimension and from
a new angle. When the attention, the values, the beauty of the other’s
heart becomes a primary value, becomes the reason for love, becomes its
choice.
I have been honored by the Lord to have in our spiritual family a couple
who are witnesses to this kind of love. Gonzalo and Maira were engaged
to be married and he had an accident by which he became paraplegic. When
he realized he was paralyzed, he spoke to Maira to release her from her
commitment. Maira asked Gonzalo: “Is your heart the same or it has
changed with the accident?” Gonzalo responded to that question saying
that his heart was not only the same but it had learned the value of
love and life. Then Maira told him: “I did not fall in love with your
body but with your heart”. That choice of love has continued for over 13
years and it has been so fruitful in bringing so many hearts to love the
Hearts of Jesus and Mary. They are the leaders of the Marian branch of
the lay members of the Family of the Two Hearts in their country.
2. Love is also put to test when one of the spouses fails and when love
has to choose not to cease to love. The test of that moment is to allow
love to triumph over hurt and distrust, and to turn it into mercy: in a
desire to receive the other back, to allow the other to enter probably
through the same wound that he or she caused. (Just like the Pierced
Heart of Jesus) The heart of the wounded spouse may experience a desire
to abandon… to run away, to leave… to withdraw and self- protect but if
he or she chooses to love will say the words of Isaiah 55, 7: “for a
brief moment I abandoned you, but with great tenderness I will take you
back”.
John Paul II spoke so beautifully in his book Love and Responsibility,
about this kind of spousal love, a love which is stronger than human
weakness, stronger even than the sin which has injured it; a love that
is stronger than the death experienced by the hurt caused by that sin:
“The strength of such love emerges most clearly when the beloved person
stumbles, when his or her weaknesses or even sins come into the open.
One who truly loves does not withdraw his love, but loves all the more,
loves in full consciousness of the other’s shortcomings and faults, and
without in the least approving of them”.
This kind of love is possible, this kind of triumph of love is possible
because it looks deeply at the essential value of the other person. He
or she is more than the sin or the fault committed. That is the way God
the Father looks at each one of us. That is mercy: to see the fullness
of the person not only the sin or the fault committed but the totality
of the person: the other is much more than his or her sin. To look at
the spouse in this way, is to look at their dignity.
To pass this test, means that love is stronger than death. I could
really say that this is a great triumph given to love, and that to allow
love to triumph in this arduous test would require humility, abnegation
and forgiveness.
3. Love is put to test through the passing of time. In time
relationships are to grow, mature, become stronger. But also, in time,
if we do not nourish these relationships, they can grow cold by routine,
they can become tiresome by the weight of duties, they can become dried
by the lack of attentiveness to water them with affection; they can
become distant by getting used to the presence of the other and not
investing time in communicating; they can become stagnant when each one
loses interest in pleasing the other; they can become harden when each
closes its heart in self-protection; they can become a battlefield when
each one is keeping track of the faults of the other… Time can be a
powerful tool for relationships to mature in love but this requires that
both hearts take responsibility not to allow the law of time and decay
to extinguish the fire of love. It is your responsibility to continue to
make, through the passing of time, love visible to one another. It is
your responsibility to remember that love must be perceived.
LOVE MUST BE PERCEIVED
If love is the essence of the human heart, it must be lived, and if it
is lived it must be visible and perceptible. Love must be incarnated in
the small actions of the daily life… Love must be revealed. It must be
such a powerful visible reality that it can cause others, beginning with
your spouse to believe in love and in the God who is love. Love must be
recognized by the actions it produces. A spouse must be able to see, to
know and to believe that she or he is loved by the other.
Many spouses fall into the great mistake of taking for granted that the
other knows that he or she loves them and they begin to neglect the
little details of love which can be expressed in the simplicity of daily
life. This lack of showing, in a perceptible way, the love that you hold
for one another can become a sharp pain in the spouse’s heart.
I invite each one of you, to live in profound awareness, that love must
be visible, love must be perceived and that the failures to love can be
healed and restored with simple but clear actions of love.
Do not ever forget the essence of your existence: love; the path of
living it: communion of love; the first place to learn it and practice
it: the family; the way to mature it: faithfulness to love in times of
trials; and the effects: make it visible and perceptible to those whom
your love must be revealed to.
I would like to conclude, inviting you, to keep your eyes fixed in the
reason for your communion: love. And to remember that love grows through
love, and that love triumphs by choosing freely and constantly to love
at all cost.
This page is the work of the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and
Mary
