We love with our soul and our body

Commentary

The masculine and feminine sexual condition is a profound dimension of the person’s intimacy that is embedded in the totality of the being and thus shape it. Spirit, soul, and boy are summoned when we love. And each spiritual and psychosomatic dimension brings its own particular content. Not in a chaotic, piled up, or partial way, but in an orderly and integrated manner with the help of the intellect and the will. That is why St. Augustine says that “the order of love is the virtues.”

In conjugal love, there is a special seal of God, for He created us male and female in his image and likeness. Through this conjugal love, man and woman leave their parents, their first intimate relationship of origin, to become one flesh. Conjugal love calls each spouse’s personal spirit, soul, and male and female body into communion. The spouses have their own bodies and souls, as masculine and feminine, placed in common co-belonging. They no longer belong to themselves. They are no longer two. He is now hers, and she is his. They are now the union of their persons on top of the unity of their masculine and feminine bodies.

Our female or male body is not an accident. We are a body. We are male or female, as the two ways of being human. Therefore, in conjugal love, the gift and embrace of persons through the communion of their bodies is a defining and determining factor of their love and way of living it. We love with gazes, with the brush of lips, with hands that touch, with a smile, and with the total surrender of the body. Moreover, this is real, direct communication. In such a way that when we simulate love or do not go wholeheartedly into the relationship, there is a feeling of manipulation and deception that diminishes it.

The surrender and embrace of the masculine and feminine condition require exceptional care between both spouses. A very intimate and naked sphere is surrendered, with unconditional and definitive meaning. And within it, each one belongs to the other. Given that you are the most intimate and important thing to me, I wish to give you the best I have, manifested through the most tangible, here and now, in the daily course of ordinary life.

This way of being – each other´s – asks to manifest itself in the most appropriate gestures and non-verbal communication of the intimate complicity and love, in the exclusive fidelity of what we both are. And that is an art form as well as a pearl of fascinating wisdom, in which, even as veterans, we learn new things every day.