English
EspañolMan and woman, through the power of love over their masculine and feminine nature, can become “as one.” They freely beget themselves “as one” thanks to the joint action of their wills known as marital consent.
The secret to an authentic conjugal union is this: husband and wife belong to each other. They don´t just act, but are “as one”; it´s not something that belongs to him or her, but to their union. And at the center of said union, husband and wife belong to each other.
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It is an encounter with a face, a “thou,” who reflects God’s own love… as the woman of the Song of Solomon will sing in a magnificent profession of love and mutual self-bestowal: “My beloved is mine, and I am his… I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine”. (The Joy of Love, n.12)
Commentary
I decided to love my husband 26 years ago, but that is not close to the amount of time I wish to be beside him. Our Union isn’t based only on the happy moments when it feels like the world smiles at us but on the difficult ones too, when our pact is tested and when weaknesses tempt us. When our Union is caught in the crossfire between the little or big things like, for example, internal or external enemies, the multiple shapes and forms that a separation can have, are brought into the light.
It is then that I remember that love is based on the decision to honor my partner and be faithful to our union. Sometimes, it isn’t easy to channel those impulses and behaviors that stem from the egocentric core that we all have. In other words, the need to satisfy oneself above all, even the marital union. And this is much more difficult when the husband or wife contemplating themselves individually and unilaterally believe in having their own reasons. We should ask ourselves if such “individual reasons” jeopardize, discourage, break and dissociate the “supreme reason” of the marital union.
Because if the union is endangered, both of us have to stop and rechannel our individual position. We both have to recover the vision of what is required and convenient for our union. How? By listening to each other and not just to ourselves, by finding and highlighting what brings us together, not what separates and breaks us, by regaining the bond of correspondence through communication, respect of our differences, mutual embrace, by the growing effort of reciprocal dedication and the desire to enjoy each other mutually, thus overcoming conditions and reservations. Fighting alongside each other means having already won. The most glorious spectacle of love is two spouses defending the life of their union together as faithful allies and accomplices.
