English
EspañolTrue love is grounded in reality! Love is not a fantasy out of this world, flying among clouds, a being “gone” and evading reality. Real love is pure realism, feet on the ground, struggling together to give birth to a life that is “alive” and hidden in the everyday routine.
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“Consumerist propaganda presents a fantasy that has nothing to do with the reality which must daily be faced by the heads of families.” It is much healthier to be realistic about our limits, defects, and imperfections, and to respond to the call to grow together, to bring love to maturity, and to strengthen the union, come what may.” (The Joy of Love, n.135)
Commentary
Those who love each other are not ghosts. Ghosts do not sweat. Those who love each other do, and very much. As it is well known, a family is a constant struggle among all of us to preserve, grow and restore the life of our union and love. The family is an everyday struggle in ordinary life that brings out the light of love: the glow of affection, help, support, tenderness, trust, and companionship.
There is no limit to love because it can grow without a horizon. When love does not grow and stagnates, we are doing something wrong. Its growth is cultivated with attitudes and gestures of affection, which embellish warm, fluid, and trusting communication. This is why Pope Francis asks us to repeat three words to each other as a family: excuse me, thanks, and sorry. They mean respect, immediate reciprocation, joy and good humor, and a tender and merciful heart. They are three weapons against our selfishness, the harshness of mistreatment, the danger of routine stagnation, and disunity.
Many people believe that love is an impossible endeavor, an illusion that ends fatally and irremediably. The mistake comes from assuming that love comes to us from the outside, something that arises, lives, and dies regardless of cultivating and taking care of it. Such attitude is an adolescent error, one that frees us from responsibility. However, love is the opposite. It arises from within us because love is how we give ourselves and embrace others. It is not Cupid who conjures love, but us. And since love is our way of being a gift and an embrace, it is our responsibility to stay alive and grow. The life of our loving relationships depends on us. May we not end up blaming the weather, our debts, or the government.
Conjugal love is cared for by applying personal virtues, dialoguing, and giving each other time…emphasizing the other person’s importance. All this is very real because its place and time are in everyday life. Idyllic love from the land of fantasy, always magically perfect and where everything is accessible wellness, is nothing more than an escape from reality. However, this falsehood hurts young people who quickly want to find what they are shown in advertisements.
The most fundamental thing is to love each other in every minute of ordinary life, feet on the ground, on the earth where, while creating a pathway, you will encounter stones, holes, much sweat, and effort. If you do not develop your personal virtues and apply them to your loving relationships, they will suffocate in the atmosphere of your selfishness. The average day-to-day of those who love each other is the Gospel´s bush set ablaze with that fire that does not burn or consume itself. On the other hand, upon a magic cloud in the world of unreal fantasy, love ignites, of course, it does, but with a fire that reduces it to ashes in less time than a rooster crows. Love without virtues incinerates.
