Love is the core of virtues

Commentary

Following the famous text of St. Paul, Pope Francis wants to tell us that virtues are not a moral or religious code extrinsic to love and in order for love to be healthy, not go mad and disordered, or not die, the virtues are injected from moral and religious codes, like penicillin, to prevent or cure infections. What a great mistake! Virtues are inside love itself; they are its entrails!

Moreover, virtues are born, lived, and grow from the heart of love. Where there is no love, where selfishness and its enclosures prevail, is where vices, abuses, and mistreatment of others are born.

Who loves is virtuous, and who is virtuous loves because every one of the virtues born from the heart of love is a specific good for the neighbor. For example: if you are generous, you love; if you are miserable, stingy, cheap, avaricious, you do not love. If you are patient, you love; but if you are irritable, aggressive, impatient, you do not love. If you are faithful, loyal, sincere, and honest, you love; but if you are treacherous, lying, disloyal, unfaithful, and defrauding, you do not love. And so on with all the virtues and their opposites.

We love as we are, with redeemable defects and improvable defects. Step by step, dose by dose. When and where do we love? Not in an exotic and magical island, but in the middle of daily family life. The exercise of virtues ceases to be an abstract concept, a doctrinaire cloud, and comes to life in someone concrete and real – this spouse, this child, this sibling – who is loved here and now, in the ordinary events of everyday life.

The love and union between husband and wife are facilitated when both discard their egocentrism and privilege the other by their own conscious, free decision. Instead of oneself, this predilection of the beloved is a process and a conjugal conquest. Conjugal means a joint venture, which is done through conversation, being aware of the project, helping each other instead of reproaching one another for stumbling and falling. Said predilection lasts a lifetime; however, it grows. When spouses are allied in this joint effort, they radiate it to the rest of the family ties; thus, many virtues are forged into habits—furthermore, a loving, warm, welcoming atmosphere of trust and solidarity within the home with them.

Little by little, these habits of reciprocal predilection bear a fascinating fruit. It is the joy of love, as Pope Francis calls his document. It is a radical, underlying joy, capable of surviving under difficulties and even calamities. It is a joy that makes us happy, rather than sullen and bitter, to be at the service of others, available to discover new ways of expressing affection, tenderness, companionship, inspiration in caring for others with sensitivity to what they need and what they expect.

Thanks to its loving bonds, the family is a school of virtues and values. In a family´s heart, the home, children understand what it means to love here on earth as a prelude to heaven. They learn to use their freedom to choose detachment and overcome selfishness. Growing in the ability to be a gift for and embracing our loved ones will take them all their lives; however, the root is sown within the family.