English
EspañolWhile navigating marriage, courage, good humor, and unity cannot be lacking, even in the midst of waves and whirlwinds.
Text
“In marriage, the joy of love needs to be cultivated. When the search for pleasure becomes obsessive, it holds us in thrall and keeps us from experiencing other satisfactions. Joy, on the other hand, increases our pleasure and helps us find fulfilment in any number of things, even at those times of life when physical pleasure has ebbed. Saint Thomas Aquinas said that the word “joy” refers to an expansion of the heart. Marital joy can be experienced even amid sorrow; it involves accepting that marriage is an inevitable mixture of enjoyment and struggles, tensions and repose, pain and relief, satisfactions and longings, annoyances and pleasures, but always on the path of friendship, which inspires married couples to care for one another: “they help and serve each other.” (The Joy of Love, n.126)
Commentary
If the predilection for self-satisfaction is progressively replaced by a predilection for one´s spouse so that their joys and sorrows become my own, then we have indeed opened the way to authentic love. We will have left behind the use of others for self-satisfaction, which is the opposite of true and good love.
Dilection refers to honest and respectful love. Changing one´s own predilection, getting out of selfishness, and looking at what the spouse wants, what they prefer, what they like leads to forsaking oneself in exchange for the joy of seeking, out of love, the good of the spouse. When it comes to daily life, dilection means joyfully giving in and being careful not to offend God, for a marriage that distances itself from God hardly perseveres. Conjugal love is a participation in the Love of God inscribed in the power of an intimate and fruitful union between a man and a woman.
