Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

than an enchantment (fascination), i.e. an Eros of a lower and unchastened kind. Their eyes
are 'held' by an egocentric love so that they do not recognize by what powers they are being
driven. Being 'swept off ones feet' is not the same as marital fidelity, which involves a decision.
At the wedding ceremony they do not ask: „Are you swept off your feet?“ but „Are you
freely willing and unconstrained?“
§ 6 Selflessly Giving Love
1. In the long run Eros is not enough to withstand all the trials. For „all these fires slowly burn
out“(Sigrid Undset). That love which Paul calls agape must be joined to Eros. It is „patient“
and „kind,“ is „not self-seeking,“ is „not prone to anger,“ does not brood over injuries“; there
is no limit to its „forbearance, to its trust, its hope, its power to endure“(1 Co 13:4-8). There
may be marriages in which agape is joined to Eros from the very beginning. In most marriages,
however, agape must grow gradually; otherwise the marriage will fail. „With marriage
love comes to an end,“ is a bad saying.
In selflessly giving conjugal love, which merges the „human with the divine“ and leads the
spouses in „gentle affection“ to a „free and mutual gift of themselves“(Gaudium et spes, 49),
man does not pledge to something, but himself. He does not love some 'thing' that the other
possesses, but the other wholly and entirely. Agape does not strive as Eros does for the enhancement
of one's self, but for that of the interpersonal other. It does not will to be happy,
but to make happy, and therefore remains protected from the danger of an 'egoism for two'.
Agape seeks to understand the other sympathetically; it accepts him or her as he or she is,
with his or her limitations and weaknesses, and does not project the unconsciously transfiguring
ideal images of the 'animus' or 'anima' unto her or him. It is „a pure attentiveness to the
existence of the other“(Lavelle), a unique understanding of his or her essence and, at the same
time, a readiness for the most intimate community of life, so that one may bear the other's
burdens (Gal 6:2) and both may become „imitators of God as his dear children“ with one another
(Eph 5:1). Although selflessly giving love is possible as 'natural' love, it finds its fulfillment
only in the supernatural theological virtue of charity. In selflessly giving love, man is
aware that from now on he is entrusting his whole life to the other and delivering himself up
to his or her formative power, without ever being able to know him or her thoroughly.
2. Eros and especially selflessly giving love possess a transforming power. It is here that the
other realms of the sexual find the fulfillment of their meaning and enhancement. Eros and
agape shine through and permeate these realms, as it were, not in order to abrogate them, but
in order to ennoble them. The sensual and sexual become an expression of conjugal love and
protect it from becoming an egoistic end in itself. The protective power also finds its fulfillment
through love, since man may now give his most secret and personal self without fear of
profanation. Likewise, the will to please one another, which otherwise so easily degenerates
into coquettishness, is experienced as meaningful in true love. Since the loving unity of hearts
is based on commonly affirmed and lived religious values, marriages between people who
stand on a different ideological and religious ground are threatened with crises more than others.
§ 7 The Awakening of New Life
„Marriage and conjugal love,“ the Second Vatican Council teaches „are by their nature ordained
toward the begetting and educating of children“ (Gaudium et spes, 50). Where there is
love there is life. As the Bride of Christ, the Church, gives her Lord ever new children of God
in the sacrament of baptism, so marriage also stands under the blessing of fertility that God
has poured out upon it. The parents therefore experience their child more as given than as
generated. Children are „the supreme gift of marriage“ (ibid, 50). The slogan common today,
53