David was red-haired, handsome in appearance

In recent weeks we have been bombarded by the media. The subject? Disagreements in marriage. I won’t name who, given my lack of resources to pay a lawyer. Joke. (with a basis of truth).

But seriously, the goal here is to treat the issue with maximum respect. Of course, using provocations and questions.

No one has any doubts about how good it is to love someone. Love in the carnal sense, really. Being in love with someone, with erotic love, recalls Pope Benedict XVI in his Encyclical “God is love”, promises us heaven, since Eros makes us experience something that obscures, with its intensity, all other forms of love.

We don’t know the beginning of love, but not the end. We love, because we love. Wherever reasons to love are needed, it means that love asked for permission and left.

We love out of commitment, out of devotion, out of vulnerability, out of an unconscious movement within us. Now how does love end? Easy. The formula is the same. It dies there where we call certainty what is just a moment, where we distrust and compete with others, where private interests pile up.

In these weeks we have seen two marriages being torn apart by “private interests”. Including our interests, in this no man’s land that is social networks. Every time we interfere with a malicious comment, or at least a frivolous one, about someone else’s relationship, we are opening the path of “love” towards the grave.

Look at yourself

Each one look at themselves, meditate on the Apostle Paul’s own words, who, being celibate, defines the love of marriage as a sign of the Mystery of the Cross of the Lord (Eph 5,25). It’s explained then: love is always an experience of pain, is it about getting used to the discomfort and lack that the other person brings? Is it an ordeal? Yes, no, not always.

It turns out that love requires an experience of death for itself to find something beyond yourself. It involves a grave, mourning, renunciation, hiding in order to find oneself. As Ana Suy reminds us, love is more about what we find than what we look for.

Jesus says: whoever seeks to save loses, whoever loses saves (MT 16, 25-26). If in a relationship we are dazzled by ourselves, by the prizes we can win, by neglecting the other, we feel strange.

If in a relationship someone focuses too much on themselves, on worshiping themselves, on their own body, the other person ceases to be important. Then go after something with more polish and that sounds much better to the eyes and ears.

Love is a choice

Love is a choice. It only stands as a choice. Choices tend to be better as what we say and perceive comes from the heart.

One of the most emblematic texts in Scripture, when it comes to seeing the heart, is the choice of king David (1 Sam 16). Samuel is dazzled by Jesse’s most robust sons.

The prophet was still mourning Saul, he was looking for something to fill the void and lack. In a different sense, God finds David, sees him, guarantees him hesed (love, kindness) and emet (fidelity, truth) (Ps 89).

This excerpt says (illuminating, almost by parody, our judgment about the present dehydrated loves): David was red-haired and, in appearance, handsome. God saw his heart. Seeing him, his Lord became fond of him, by becoming fond of God, David becomes a king after his own heart.

Good and true

To be love, and transgress time, with affection and sincerity, it is not enough to be “cute” and “pleasant”. It has to be good and true. If you love, if you give. “I saw” the essence, says the “I” who opens up to the beauty that is remaining.

We don’t know the beginning of love, but not the end. Love ends when it stops being “light, ray, star and moonlight”, “and becomes a spotlight”. Love ends when the heart muscles are neglected.

Love stops talking when there is little soft talk, happiness is not simple, and there is excess and shouting. Where to find love? Wow, where is the heart? And where to find the heart? “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Mt 6:21).

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