The Pope said that while “falling in love is one of the purest feelings,” there is the risk of it being “polluted by vice.”
Continuing his series of catecheses on vice and virtue, Pope Francis dedicated his general audience on Wednesday to emphasizing the difference between love and lust, affirming that “in Christianity, there is no condemnation of the sexual instinct.
By centering his reflection on “the human experience”, the pope was inspired by the Song of Songs, also called Song of Songs or Song of Solomon, which he described as “a marvelous love poem between two lovers” which reveals the fall love “is one of the most astonishing realities of existence”.
The Pope observed that in this process there is an altruistic factor in which “a person in love becomes generous, likes to give gifts, writes letters and poems. He stops thinking about himself to concentrate completely on the other.
“To love is to respect others, to seek their happiness, to cultivate empathy for their feelings, to dispose ourselves in the knowledge of a body, a psychology and a soul which are not ours and which must be contemplated for the beauty they carry,” the Pope declared to the faithful gathered in the Paul VI Hall.
The Holy Father, however, stressed that this notion of love requires “patience”, especially if it is “naive”, because “the lover does not really know the face of the other, he tends to idealize, he is ready to compromise.” promises whose weight they do not immediately grasp.
The Pope said that while “falling in love is one of the purest feelings,” there is the risk of it being “polluted by vice.”
“This “garden” where wonders multiply is, however, not safe from evil” because it has been “sullied by the demon of lust”, a vice “particularly odious” because it “destroys the relationships between men,” Francis said. .
Reflecting on the modern paradigm of dating and romance, the Pope asked: “How many relationships that started out in the best of ways have then turned into toxic, possessive relationships lacking respect and sense of limits?
“These are loves in which chastity was lacking: a virtue not to be confused with sexual abstinence, but rather with the desire never to possess the other,” continued the Holy Father.
“He pillages, he steals, he consumes in haste, he does not want to listen to others but only to his own needs and his own pleasure. Lust judges any romantic relationship as boring; it does not seek this synthesis between reason, impulse and feeling which would help us to lead our existence wisely.
Noting that romantic pursuits based on lust “only seek shortcuts,” the Pope stressed that “the path of love must be traveled slowly, and this patience, far from being synonymous with boredom, allows us to make our romantic relationships happy.
The Pope presented an additional reason why lust is so devious, saying: “It involves all the senses; it inhabits both the body and the psyche.
“If it is not disciplined with patience, if it is not part of a relationship and a story where two individuals transform it into a loving dance, it turns into a chain that deprives the human being of freedom” , added the Holy Father.
The Pope concluded his reflection by emphasizing that the “battle” against lust and the objectification of human beings is a “lifelong” process. However, it is the one that preserves “this beauty that God inscribed in his creation when he imagined the love between man and woman”.
“This beauty which makes us believe that it is better to build a story together than to go on an adventure, to cultivate tenderness is better than to bow before the demon of possession, to serve is better than to conquer,” said the Pope .
