English
EspañolA child comes from the intimate interior of conjugal love. It is not flown in from some distant place by the stork. It is not an external addition. It is a living effusion that flows from within the conjugal union to the life of the family and society.
Text
“The child who is born “does not come from outside as something added on to the mutual love of the spouses, but springs from the very heart of that mutual giving, as its fruit and fulfilment.” He or she does not appear at the end of a process, but is present from the beginning of love as an essential feature, one that cannot be denied without disfiguring that love itself.” (The Joy of Love, n.80)
Commentary
It is beneficial for young parents to understand that children come from the very heart of their conjugal love, not from the outside, from something foreign to them. Fatherhood and motherhood are not external, independent additions to being a man or a woman. They are constitutive dimensions of their being. For this reason, they form an integral part from the beginning of their conjugal love, of the reciprocal gift and embrace of their masculinity and femininity.
This understanding will fill them with confidence and remove the fear, ever-present for many, of opening themselves to fatherhood and motherhood. The dynamics of fecundity within conjugal love is something inherent to their love. The paradigm of this fecundity is the children, but in the end, it is the construction of what is “ours” – this recreation of life by living what is new, as the union that “we” are, the union you and I have created.
Therefore, in all truthfulness and appropriateness, we refer to them as “our love, life, children, and family.”
