Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap, San Ġwann
Faithful love and divorce
One of the most misunderstood and abused words today is love. The great Viennese psychoanalyst Erich Fromm (1904-1996), wrote:
"Can you possess love? ... In reality there is only the act of loving... Loving is a productive activity; it implies caring for, knowing, sympathising with, affirming, delighting in a person, a tree, an image, or an idea. It means awakening him/her to life and adding something to his/her/its liveliness. It is a process that renews someone and helps him/her renew."
The basis of love is a covenant, a voluntary "yes" to the beloved. Love always revolves around a lively communication. In Rollo May's words, "communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing". Does not love create a community between persons who, voluntarily, offer a continual "eye-to-eye" relationship? Love demands constant vital faithfulness that persistently regards the other person afresh through the eyes of love. Such a noble task needs time, patience and reflection.
Love is a daily miracle since it is a gift from God. Love carries us on its wings and helps us persevere in what is true, right, just and honourable. It keeps us journeying in the light of the Lord one breath after the next.
That is why St John says: "In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins...God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him...We love, because he first loved us" (1 Jn 4, 10. 16. 19). Such faithful love does not accept divorce. It is stronger than any break up, even than death itself!
St Bonaventure writes, "And such is the power of your love, O soul, that, as Bernard writes, 'you live more truly where you love than where you breathe' [De Praecepto, 20:61]. This dearest soul is the kingdom of God within us..." True love is a divine spark. In a poem that bears the same name, Sr Roselle Schaefer prays: "O divine spark, I cherish you. Live on in this temple of my heart. Like a consuming fire I long to be united to You. I long to fly away and be with you - Consummate our union, Lord!"
Can we afford letting this divine spark guide and perpetuate our lives in eternity?
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Joseph Vella
Oct 22nd 2008, 18:23
Father Mario failed to mention the most blissful, uncomplicated form of love ever, admiring one's own reflecting image in a mirror and liking it. The kinship requires no theological musings, no relational definitions, no commitments moral, legal or whatever else society imposes, other than to indulge in self comfort and well being.
This free lifestyle will bankrupt lawyers and clerics alike, in that there will no longer be a necessity for interventions, on behalf of those who sought out the company of others, in search of Utopia and found torment instead.
While a narcissistic arrangement is but a figment of imagination, it serves as a metaphor that loving another person is wrought with grave risk. The art of unconditional sharing is more fiction than real, notwithstanding the lofty idealistic pronouncements of church and novellas.
Our instinct for survival under very stressful conditions, is a greater force than our declared vows of family fidelity, and acquired social responsibilities. In such situations the law of the jungle almost always prevails. Moralizing from a pulpit and good intentions notwithstanding, mortals are fallible. The cost for society is immeasurable, where romanticized devotional love fails, and is replaced by other difficult options.
Love is indefinable.
William P Flynn
Oct 22nd 2008, 01:41
No Mr Tonna. But interference with social matters wrapped in catholic religious raving is offensive and annoying in a secular paper; he should be doing that in a catholic publication.
But he can go ahead so long as it is understood that, in a secular paper, celibate Romeo's, sorry Mario's, awkward and unwanted romantic advances might get him thrown off the balcony - figuratively speaking of course.
I mean, how can you put some virginal nun's convoluted and deviant sexual substitution poem in the same bag as divorce, marriage and real sexual love? And who'd think of St Bonaventure (assuming anyone except Mario, knows who he was) when flesh meets flesh? If it wasn't so embarrassing, it would be funny.
Mario must remember that priests in pretty dresses, in front of altars, in churches with crosses, officiate over marriages of divorcees; and they quote from the bible too! Though I can't say St Bonaventure ever comes up ....
J. Tonna
Oct 21st 2008, 19:11
Mr Flynn - So you want Fr Mario locked in the sacristy (or on the pulpit) and not contacting us Catholics in the media too. KEEP IT UP FR. MARIO, WE ALWAYS LIKE TO READ YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS.
Robert Attard
Oct 21st 2008, 11:40
'Love is a daily miracle'
why do you call it a daily miracle? is it so improbable (i guess not if it happens daily)? against all odds? supernatural? statistically impossible? unexplainable?
Examples from the best seller guide to 'The love of God'
1) Ask Your faithful servant to kill his son to test his faith.
2) drown all the world and kill almost all its inhabitants but a select few.
3) send your son to be lynched by an angry mob as a token of your love.
4) Let millions die of disease and natural ordeals.
5) Condemn those who dont obey your commands to the eternal fire.
William P Flynn
Oct 21st 2008, 10:05
That is so true. Only catholics fall in love. Moslems, protestants, hindus, and (especially) atheists and homosexuals, well, they never fall in love. They think they do; but how could they? They've never even heard of (1 Jn 4, 10. 16. 19); nay, not even [De Praecepto, 20:61].
To be quite candid nor had I until now and I've been married to the same woman for 43 years.
And divorcees, and separated people; they never fall in love either. Thank goodness or we'll have thousands of people cohabitating. That's why sixty odd per cent of Maltese want divorce legalized - just so they don't fall in love again.
Mario, Mario wherefore art thou Mario? Shouldn't you be in church on your pulpit?
Kenneth Cassar
Oct 21st 2008, 09:57
What has this got to do with divorce? If there is only one kind of love, then, if we are supposed to love everybody, should we then perhaps marry everybody?