The Extraordinary Synod on the Family is approaching. What does the adjective "Christian" imply or mean concretely with regard to conjugal sexuality? How is this love prolonged through the family?

Love and self-giving

1. In Christian marriage, understood and lived from the submission of Christ, eleros - possessive love - is transformed into agape, in love for the other that no longer seeks itself but becomes availability to sacrifice itself for the other and in openness to the gift of a new human life.

This self-giving love is the same love that fills the life and the mission statement of the Church, to bring to the world the mercy of Christ's heart and the hope of an immortal life. Charity, love, is an essential element in the Church's mission statement . And, as John Paul II said, if love - love with deeds - were lacking, everything could remain just words.

The path from eros to agape

2. Love in marriage. What constitutes the core of marriage is the love between the spouses, manifested in consent as a sign and real instrument of their mutual submission . According to the encyclical Deus Caritas Est, the Christian meaning of married love leads to what we could call "three surprises".

a) "Eros" can be model of all love. The love between man and woman can be considered as model and origin of all love, although it is not the only form of love. In addition, there is the love of friendship, the love of parents and the love of pure benevolence or agape, which is a gift of God linked to religious faith. In the New Testament this agape is translated as "charity" because it implies a radically new way of loving, as a participation in the love of Christ.

According to the Greeks, eros - possessive love - is capable of pregusting the infinite or eternal, and at the same time it is called to master itself through purification, maturation and Withdrawal to itself. This need for purification of eros is present in the Bible, for example in the story of Tobias, where prayer is placed before the union of the newlyweds. It is also a manifestation that, after the original sin, harmony between body and spirit is not easy.

In the modern world, like sample Thibon, this lack of harmony between body and spirit is evident. Many marriages fail because they try to seek the infinite - the ideal love without limits - in something that is finite - the body of the one they love - as if someone wanted to find all the words of a novel on its cover.

But people are neither pure spirit nor pure flesh, we must love as what we are, body and soul. The Bible teaches that love between spouses is a reflection of and a way to find God's own love. However, to achieve this, eros must be open to agape, overcoming selfishness. The most perfect love is to forget oneself, to be ready to Withdrawal and to sacrifice oneself for the good of the other.

Paradoxically, this is how eros achieves the promised "ecstasy", going out of the self to give itself to the other, as a way to authentically meet the true self. Jesus says it clearly: the grain of wheat must die if it is to bear abundant fruit.

Thus our "first surprise" is resolved: what the Bible presents as model of all love is not eros without more - the attraction between man and woman - but eros that strives to become agape. The possessive love that changes into love of donation. 

Love also needs to receive

b) In Christianity "eros" is maintained and perfected. Christianity facilitates the way to true love, which does not consist in the disappearance of eros - the attractiveness and vehemence of love - because human love needs not only to give, but also to receive. In Christianity this receiving is always guaranteed, at least on the part of God, who opens up to a higher happiness than that contained in mere receiving. 

In order to understand how Christianity assumes eros, without destroying it, and perfects it by raising it to the divine level, it is useful to reflect on the image of God and the image of man, as presented in the Bible.
God loves man with both a passionate love and a benevolent love - a love that gives freely and is capable of forgiveness - which can be compared to the two dimensions of human love, eros and agape. 

As for man, the Bible sample that human nature is only complete when it is related in some way to the other sex. That is why marriage as exclusive and definitive love is an icon of God's relationship with his people and vice versa. And so we come to the third of the "surprises" that Christianity has in store for us.

Married love, icon of God's love for humanity

c) In Christianity, human love becomes an icon of God's love for humanity. In the Gospels, Jesus presents himself as the spouse of humanity, sanctifies with his presence the marriage at Cana and compares the Kingdom of God to a wedding feast. St. Paul interprets the death of Christ as submission for his bride the Church. And the Apocalypse closes by celebrating the wedding between God and man.
In short, in Christianity eros is not only not suppressed, but is elevated and perfected, to the point that it refers to the love of God for humanity, fully realized in the love of Jesus Christ for the Church. Thus it is sample that love is the ultimate meaning of existence. 

All this can be summarized as follows: the love of the spouses is called to become the heart of the worship that the mutual submission of their lives offers, for the glory of God and the happiness of all the people around them.

Thanks to the sacrament of marriage, the spouses are enabled not only to look together to God in union with the Church, but also to participate in the very love between Christ and the Church, the "soul" of Christian worship. Thus the love of the spouses is placed not alongside their faith or their spiritual life, but at the very heart of it, of their vocation and mission statement.

Now, all Christian love, including married love, has the Eucharist at its center. This is so because the Eucharist is the update of the submission of Christ for each and every man and woman in history. The Eucharist unites us to Christ and to those who are united with Him, and therefore has a marked social character.

It is interesting to remember that for the first Christians, agape was another name for the Eucharist. All this means that the authentic "ecstasy" of love consists in the openness of the spouses to God and to each other. 

The need for union with God and attention to the most needy.

Let us now underline these two dimensions of married love: openness to God and to others. 

a) Necessity of union with God in order to live love in marriage. If God is not present in the spiritual life of the spouses, they will not know how to find in each other the divine image. And vice versa, no matter how much they would like to be "pious" and fulfill their religious duties, if they do not attend to the other spouse -giving him/her love and caring for his/her integral good-, they will not be truly open to God either.

b) Married love, family and care for the most needy. Love is a gift of the Holy Spirit, who is at the same time "like the soul" of the Church, who impels her to express the love of God in the world. In other words, the very love of the spouses, which one day they promised each other before God, is, through the action of the Holy Spirit and the partnership of the spouses, the continuous source , the driving force and the beauty of their task in the world. 

The work is a means, not an end; the first thing is love between spouses.

It is not, therefore, being fundamental, the work is not the first decisive thing to move the family forward. Neither is the attention to the children "the first thing". It is living the love between them, the spouses, that is fundamental, which will then lead them to give themselves first and foremost in the family, for the Christian Education of their children, even if they have become independent of the home. 

This is equivalent to understanding that love between spouses does not consist so much in contemplating and savoring each other, but rather in giving themselves to realities and horizons that transcend them by freeing them from the egotistical limits of self, through personal effort and sacrifice as partnership of the work of Christ. 

Self-education for love

3. Two conclusions regarding marital love and children: 

a) Living love in marriage requires self-education for love; learning to love one another with respect and showing affection with details; knowing how to forgive one another -because the other is not God- to help one another grow in love; taking care of the spiritual life and the continuous Christian training ; opening oneself to other couples and families; to live, above all indoors, with a "Christian style" in language and dress, in the use of money and material goods, in leisure time and in vacation plans; to fight against the disintegrating dynamics of work (the profession cannot be placed above love for one's wife or husband; work is a means, the family is an end; and for this it is useful to put concrete means and firm points: schedule arrival time at home, time to devote to the children, leaving professional concerns aside from the home).

Putting love in the world

b) The mission statement of marriage is to put love in the world; and for it to be ready in principle to have children, if God sends them; to educate them with love -caring and strength- and with the testimony of virtues and Christian life, without voluntarisms or negativisms, without naturalisms (there you go) or dirigisms (because I say so); to sow in them noble ideals and teach them to put the right means to achieve them; to dialogue and communicate with them, teaching them the value of work and service; to feel with the Church and collaborate in ecclesial tasks; to take special care of the most needy (works of mercy).

In short, married love should lead to a sowing of love first of all in the children, educating them as citizens and good Christians who base their lives on the foundations of trust in God the Father, friendship with Jesus, the light and strength of the Spirit, the tenderness of Mary.