It’s obvious that love is the cornerstone upon which the marriage is built.
But since the word love is the most commonly handled word of the dictionary, it has put on more variegated and exotic connotations throughout the centuries. There are those have defined it as emotion, energy, vibration, passion, ideal … etc.
What is lived is not defined.
It has a thousand meanings, it is clothed with a thousand colors, it confuses like an enigma, it fascinates like a siren.
Allegories
Let me for a moment digress a little into the realms of allegory and metaphor, because perhaps the most apt means to talk about love is the suggestion and evocation, allowing to float an I don’t know what which, without trying, may be understood.
To love is to cross the threshold of frontiers that exist between dream and reality.
To love is to verify how, ¡finally! the shadow of loneliness falls in a faint.
To love is to surprise impossible dreams to some, dreams that in the end will lead far beyond surprises.
To love is to cross the desert during the day and, at dusk, find buried in the sand the golden key of enchantment.
To love is to discover the secret that keeps its seeds under the snow.
To love is to wake up one day and decipher for the first time the writings which the swallows weave with their flight. It seems magical.
Learning to live is learning to love because only those who love, live.
If the sun burns out, the earth would be in absolute darkness. If love dies out, marriage, life itself for that matter, turns into absolute boredom.
When the sun of love shines in-between conjugal spaces, life is a perpetual miracle, a rose in the hand, a song on the lips, a melody from the stars, a prodigy of grace and overall enchantment.
Love has no reasons or explanations. It enters one’s living space without any previous announcement; and, without even a by your leave, breaks structures, burns old standards, reduces venerable ideals into ash, alters criteria, shakes up shelves and throws hierarchies of values to the winds.
Examination
Love is an energy that devours distances between a human being and another and unifies them, thus overcoming affective emptiness and existential solitude.
As we have said, despite opening up an infinite distance between two individuals, the wonder of life together in pair will always be possible.
Authentic love looks at the person itself not at its accessories.
If one loves another person because of social position or title or surname, it is an adulterated love.
A love that is born on the attraction of a splendid anatomy or from a seductive look can freeze at the first instance of frost. It was an ephemeral/fleeting sentiment.
A love based on external factors is actually camouflaged selfishness. Furthermore, we can affirm that authentic love does have an irrational character, that is, it has no reasons for loving. Love is born spontaneously, it does not ask why.
Just as a precious gem is not appraised by the container no matter how expensive it may be but for its intrinsic beauty, so in authentic love, the person is loved no matter who he or she is.
Extracted from the book ´Happy Marriage´ by Fr. Ignacio Larrañaga
