English
EspañolBe rebellious! Breakaway from today´s human herds. They bleat and moo about love like the oldest of packs. Do not be part of a crowd, be a person!
Rebellion in the name of what? In the name of love worthy of your person. A love between you and your loved ones, where you give yourself and embrace them wholly and sincerely, with truth and without deceit. Do not rebel for a seasonal love that is then discarded. Do not rebel to become part of the herd.
Text
“This is hardly to suggest that we cease warning against a cultural decline that fails to promote love or self-giving. The consultation that took place prior to the last two Synods pointed to the various symptoms of a “culture of the ephemeral”. Here I think, for example, of the speed with which people move from one affective relationship to another. They believe, along the lines of social networks, that love can be connected or disconnected at the whim of the consumer, and the relationship quickly “blocked”. I think too of the fears associated with permanent commitment, the obsession with free time, and those relationships that weigh costs and benefits for the sake of remedying loneliness, providing protection, or offering some service. We treat affective relationships the way we treat material objects and the environment: everything is disposable; everyone uses and throws away, takes and breaks, exploits and squeezes to the last drop. Then, goodbye. Narcissism makes people incapable of looking beyond themselves, beyond their own desires and needs. Yet sooner or later, those who use others end up being used themselves, manipulated and discarded by that same mind-set. It is also worth noting that breakups often occur among older adults who seek a kind of “independence” and reject the ideal of growing old together, looking after and supporting one another.” (The Joy of Love, n.39)
Commentary
I would like to raise awareness of an element that should be mentioned to couples during premarital preparation. A fact that is not discussed and should also be addressed at school and home. What is this element?
It is an artificial product, a cultural atmosphere regarding sexuality and love, created, spread, and imposed by some ideological powers. It is an actual gas chamber; you go in for a refreshing shower but what you find inside is death.
Parents want what is best for their children. Precisely because of this loving strength, parents should be asked to alert their children to the interests behind so many advertising campaigns, which are reinforced in fashion, movies, television, radio, and magazines. Let them teach their children to be critical and free in the face of these alienations of their inner selves. May they learn to be people and not a mass of people. Sexuality and love by standards of the human herd, will do them much harm, fill them with failures, and leave them empty and sad.
While the time shared between parents and children pales compared to the brutal exposure to which young people are subjected, permanently exposed through their cell phones, the generation gap becomes more severe, thus causing isolation. Parents do not fully understand the magnitude of the exposure to disorienting messages their children are subject to nowadays.
A clear example, among many, is certain fashionable music that parents sing and even make their children dance to, without bothering to understand what the lyrics propose about love or the behavior models that are being promoted by that medium. They suggest the opposite of what parents believe and teach.
It is not a matter of the family repressing and prohibiting without further ado, for children are human beings, not flocks of sheep. It is a matter of communicating with their children, explaining, clarifying, teaching them to be a free person and not one that follows the heard, and above all bearing testimony through their own life of what true and good love is.
