A lazy Saturday. I'm reading JP II's "Love and Responsibility."
"Only true knowledge of a person makes it possible to commit one's freedom to him or her. Love consists of a commitment which limits one's freedom --- it is a giving of the self, and to give oneself means just that: to limit one's freedom on behalf of another. Limitation of one's freedom might seem to be something negative and unpleasant, but love makes it a positive, joyful and creative thing. Freedom exists for the sake of love. If freedom is not used, is not taken advantage of by love it becomes a negative thing and gives human beings a feeling of emptiness and unfulfilment. Love commits freedom and imbues it with that to which the will is naturally attracted --- goodness. The will aspires to the good, and freedom belongs to the will, hence freedom exists for the sake of love, because it is by way of love that human beings share most fully in the good. This is what gives freedom its real entitlement to one of the highest places in the moral order, in the hierarchy of man's wholesome longings and desires. But man longs for love more than for freedom --- freedom is the means and love the end. He longs however for true love, for only if it is based on truth is a genuine commitment of freedom possible. The will is free, but at the same time it 'is obliged to' seek the good which is congenial to it, it can seek and choose freely, but it is not free from the need to seek and choose."
- Pope John Paul II
Heady stuff, that. I wonder how many marital crises could be averted if the spouses truly believed that freedom is for the sake of love. Oh well. Life is beautiful. Let's all learn to dance like Napoleon Dynamite.
2 Comments:
"Hey, Jude, don't make it bad
Take a sad song and make it better
Remember to let her into your heart
Then you can start to make it better
"Hey, Jude, don't be afraid
You were made to go out and get her
The minute you let her under your skin
Then you begin to make it better.
The late Holy Father's choice of words may be somewhat infelicitous to American ears. Remember that a definition is a limit to an idea -- without the limit the word has any meaning and hence no meaning. Without the self-limitation that goes with true love, we are nothing but undefined terms. I suspect that a few hundred years from now JP II's greatest contribution will be his beginning of the unraveling of "personal development". It is at the heart of both his social teaching and his metaphysics of the *person*. Development is becoming "who we are" -- which is to say, not becoming who we are not -- it is a limitation and definition in the positive and most liberating sense. To be defined by love is to be truly free.
Peace to you, dear.
--
crowndot
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