The Child as the Guardian of

Fr. Antonio Lopez

If, as some have shown, coming to terms with the meaning of divorce and its effects on children requires dealing with the nature of marriage,1 marriage itself is impossible to understand without questioning the meanings of person and love, as well as their relation to their ultimate origin. Once we see what the human person is and what is characteristic about human love and its distinctive fruitfulness, it will be possible to grasp more clearly that what is at stake in the family—and hence what divorce renders problematic for both parents and children—is the person’s participation in the truth of love. I will proceed in five steps. First, I will show that, ontologically speaking, the form of the human person is filial. Nietzsche’s anthropology will clarify by contrast our understanding of the child and show that we cannot adequately consider childhood apart from the mystery of our own birth. Second, I will speak of the unity of love proper to married love, its dynamic relation of giving and receiving and its fruitfulness.

Exploring the nature of love will help us to grasp better the homelessness that results for parents and, above all, children when this unity is broken (sections 3–4). I will conclude by reflecting on the sacrifice required for the unity of human love to be true.

1. Memory and Childhood

In her best seller, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: The 25 Year Landmark

1 Elizabeth Marquardt, Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2005), 22. Study, Judith Wallerstein cogently argues against the claim that “divorce is a temporary crisis

that exerts its most harmful effects on parents and children at the time of the breakup.”2 Indeed,

children of divorced parents have to learn to live the rest of their lives with the wounds their

parents’ breakup inflicts on them. The literature on children of divorced parents is also an

eloquent witness to another frequently neglected fact: the past cannot be canceled. Even if

parents can partially justify dismissing their past life together, the presence of their children is a

permanent reminder that the past remains present. Although the past—that is, the exchange of

vows, and the children as fruit of their union—can be denied, it cannot be deleted. This brief

remark on time and divorce opens for us an ontological dimension of the human person that

normally goes unnoticed. The past abides, and the effects of divorce are enduring because the

form of the person is filial.3 In other terms, the filial relation and the effects of divorce are

ontological: they regard what the person and love are. As we shall see later, the child is the fruitful unity of the parents’ love. At the beginning of this chapter we can indicate positively that the child’s identity arises qua the loving unity between the parents. We thus cannot extirpate his relationship with his parents and with the trinitarian mystery their nuptial love represents.

Children dwell in their parents and parents dwell in their children. This filial relation is constitutive, that is, ever defining and ever new. Negatively speaking we can say that, when parents divorce, the ontological identity of the child is called into question in a profound sense.

Quite literally, the divorce poses anew for the child the question: “Who am I?”

What does it mean to say that the filial relation is ontological? The human being is and remains childlike. To clarify this claim, I would like to turn to Nietzsche’s contrasting, albeit

2 Judith S. Wallerstein, Julia M. Lewis, and Sandra Blakeslee, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: The 25 Year Landmark Study (New York: Hyperion, 2000), xxx. 3 Andrew Root addresses the ontological dimension of the effects of divorce on children. Andrew Root, The Children of Divorce: The Loss of Family as the Loss of Being (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), 43–65. deceivingly similar, thesis, which apprehends the human person without any reference to his

origin. Nietzsche’s account, in fact, describes very accurately the way we still think and operate.

At the beginning of his epoch-opening book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the German philosopher

writes: “Of three metamorphoses of the spirit I tell you: how the spirit becomes a camel; and the

camel, a lion; and the lion, finally, a child.”4 Since the remarkably deep and powerful description

of Zarathustra’s path through life is well known, it suffices now to make explicit the points that

are pertinent to our reflection. Zarathustra, like everyone who dares to embrace the dangerous

but indispensable adventure of becoming an overman, has first to appropriate all the values,

moral imperatives, beliefs, ideas, words, and traditions that history and family bequeath.5 One

begins by receiving all these values and beliefs like a camel does: kneeling and letting oneself be

well loaded. The spirit-camel soon discovers that all these “grave words and values” are alien to

him. Because they do not come from him, “life seems a desert to him.”6 The spirit thus needs to

roar at all this inheritance with the strength of a lion and destroy it through laughter. Only the

one who breaks the inherited tables of values and worldviews, that is, uncompromisingly

questions everything, realizes that every value comes from oneself.7 The spirit-lion, however, is

still unable to create a new table of values and be content with the fact that this table is its own.

Only the spirit that becomes a child has the courage of the new, the unstoppable energy to

discover what is authentic, and the joy that desires and knows how to reach the highest peaks.

4 Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Penguin Books, 1976), 137. Hereafter cited as TSZ. 5 For the meaning of the overman see, among others, Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), nos. 143, 283, 289, 292, 309, 310, 324, 342, hereafter cited as GS; TSZ, Prologue, no. 3; bk. 1, no. 20; bk. 2, no. 4; Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Random House, 1967), nos. 804, 866, 983, 1001, 1027, 1060, hereafter cited as WtP. 6 TSZ, 305. 7 “We should be able also to stand above morality—and not only to stand with the anxious stiffness of a man who is afraid of slipping and falling any moment, but also to float above it and play. How then could we possibly dispense with art—and with the fool? And as long as you are in any way ashamed before yourselves, you do not yet belong with us” (GS, no. 107). It is clear here that Nietzsche’s radical questioning never wonders about the truth of one’s own table of values. The overman and his will to power are the measure of all things. The child, Nietzsche tells us, is “innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-

propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred ‘Yes.’ For the game of creation, my brothers, a

sacred ‘Yes’ is needed: the spirit now wills his own will and he who had been lost to the world

now conquers his own world.”8 For Nietzsche, the child does not encounter values. Rather, he

bestows value on the world in which he lives.9 Only the child is able to “create for himself a sun of his own.”10 The creator-child is the one who is able to play the game of forging one’s own

values and of determining what is good and evil.11

Nietzsche contends that the courage of the new and the energy to build a worldview express the child’s power to create. Nietzsche’s spirit-child is the epitome of the will to power, that is, of the eternal striving to overcome oneself. The child is the real human being (the overman) inasmuch as he wills his own will. Contrary to what we may think, this will to power is not concerned with controlling others—hurting others is a sign that one still lacks power.12 Nor

does the will to power aim at an eschatological realization of oneself. Rather, it is a constant

fight, a permanent striving to perfect oneself, to master oneself. This human height consists in

the unity in which the different drives of life (passions, reason, etc.) have been sublated, that is,

preserved, canceled, and lifted up.13 The mastery of oneself, therefore, is not the canceling out of

8 TSZ, 139. 9 GS, no. 301. 10 Ibid., no. 320. He further wrote: “Let us therefore limit ourselves to the purification of our opinions and valuations and to the creation of our own new tables of what is good, and let us stop brooding about the ‘moral value of our actions’!” (ibid., no. 335). 11 Heidegger, who spent much time reading Nietzsche, wrote that “there are also great children. By the gentleness of its play, the greatest royal child is that mystery of the play in which humans are engaged throughout their life, that play in which their essence is at stake. . . . The question remains whether and how we, hearing the movements of this play, play along and accommodate ourselves to the play.” , The Principle of Reason, trans. Reginald Lilly, (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996), 113. 12 “Certainly the state in which we hurt others is rarely as agreeable, in an unadulterated way, as that in which we benefit others; it is a sign that we are still lacking power, or it shows a sense of frustration in the face of this poverty” (GS, no. 13). See also Nietzsche’s piercing remarks on equality in TSZ, 211–14. 13 WtP, no. 675. passions, but, as Nietzsche writes, the “great and rare art” of “‘giving style’ to one’s character.”14

It is indeed not surprising that, as was the case for Nietzsche himself, the child is utterly

homeless in the world he creates. “How could we, children of the future,” Nietzsche asks

rhetorically, “be at home in this today?”15 The American transcendentalist Ralph W. Emerson

(1803–1882) expressed this homelessness very lucidly: “The great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”16

Nietzsche’s is stunningly radical. The conception of the person (and childhood) in terms of will appears with all its force only after the fog of God’s existence has been dissipated by the “madman.”17 According to Nietzsche, this never-ending, beautiful, and

tragic existence of ours knows no God, let alone a divine Father.18 The gods, he writes, die by laughing themselves to death after hearing “There is one god. Thou shalt have no other god before me’!”19 Finite existence is populated simply by man and his ever-transient values, beliefs, and feelings. Nietzsche’s spirit-child has no one on whom his existence depends and to whom he tends.20 Eternity is in the “Moment.”21

His account of the “childlike” overman—minus several nuances and all its depth—still

largely determines our contemporary understanding of the adult human person. Many today, in

fact, embrace the idea that we reach adulthood when we gain access to the secret of adult life;

14 GS, no. 290. 15 Ibid., no. 377. Marriage, a beautiful and very dangerous reality for the philosopher, does not escape this law. 16 Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays and Lectures (New York: Library of America, 1983), 263. 17 GS, no. 125. 18 “Why atheism today?” asks Nietzsche. “‘The father’ in God has been thoroughly refuted; ditto, ‘the judge,’ ‘the rewarder.’ Also his ‘free will’: he does not hear—and if he heard he still would not know how to help. Worst of all: he seems incapable of clear communication: is he unclear?” Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), chap. 3, no. 53, p. 66. 19 TSZ, 294. 20 Zarathustra exclaimed: “But let me reveal my heart to you entirely, my friends: if there were gods, how could I endure not to be a god! Hence there are no gods. Though I drew this conclusion, now it draws me” (TSZ, 198). See also GS, 143. 21 TSZ, 269–72. See also Martin Heidegger, The Eternal Recurrence of the Same, vol. 2 of Nietzsche, trans. David Farrell Krell (New York: HarperOne, 1984), 49–62. that is, not simply when children know what grown-ups already know, but when they discover

that it is the adult who determines what good and evil are.22 Adults can specify the value of life,

love, marriage, work, etc. They give meaning to things or try to make sense out of the

circumstances they encounter. They create a worldview with which they are happy. They do not

call themselves “overmen,” but they do understand “person” to mean a self-standing, free

“individual” who holds nothing more dearly than willing.

Undoubtedly, the conception of person as “individual” retains an aspect of truth: no one

can take my place in responding to the fundamental questions that life addresses to me.

Individuality also preserves a crucial aspect of our human existence: we are historical ,

and what we are is called to undergo a transformation and to flourish profusely. Our will and

reason play a crucial role in our growing humanity. Yet, in our culture, the perception of the

person as an individual equipped with his own set of ideas, beliefs, and feelings neglects a more

original aspect of human existence: life’s questions to me precede my own questions. To

conceive of mature human persons as constitutively orphans, as Nietzsche does, is to surrender to

that mirage of the modern imagination according to which one defines oneself without the

memory of the mystery of one’s own birth.23 This memory is surprisingly absent in Nietzsche’s

reflection on the spirit-child, and its omission dominates the contemporary perception of the

human person. Nietzsche’s account of childhood, precisely in discussing childlikeness,

consciously and systematically avoids dealing with the mystery of birth. This neglect forces us to

think of children either negatively, that is, as not-yet-adults, or romantically, that is, as living a stage closer to the truth of human nature that society and biological growth soon bring to an end.

22 Neil Postman locates the difference between children and adults precisely in the access the latter have to things, truths, and experiences that the former do not. Our technological society, he indicates, has blurred the distinction between the two. Humans now are simply adult-child. Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood (New York: Vintage Books, 1994). 23 See Nietzsche’s remarks on the eternal recurrence of the same in his WtP, nos. 1053–67. We must realize, however, that every evil and all suffering come precisely from this lie, that is,

from the modern mirage according to which the human being, in practically and theoretically

defining himself, cancels from his memory the mystery of his own birth.24

Three drastic consequences clearly follow from neglecting the mystery of birth, and these

determine both how we judge what person, love, and marriage are and what is at stake in

divorce. The first is fear. Homeless, creators of the meaning of our own existence, we live in

terror before the other person, whom we tend to perceive as a threat to our own power.25 Perhaps because of this, but not exclusively, much of our modern conception of rights is governed by the need for protection from any coercive force, any alien will that would threaten the independence of our loneliness.26 Because we have forgotten our ongoing relation to our origin, this fear is also

the fear that loneliness will be the last word on our existence, that is, the fear of not finding

anyone whose love will accompany us as we live and die.

As history has shown, the second consequence is that, with no external reference beyond

himself, the lonely person is governed by feelings.27 We call truth whatever we feel has some

sense, and in acting we choose what we feel to be good or what makes us feel good. Hence it is

not surprising that much of the current literature on marriage describes the experience of love in

terms of intimacy, that is, transient emotions. There is no unity between the love one has for

another person, sexual interactions, fruitfulness, and one’s own bodiliness. We all know,

however, that upon emotions we cannot build any lasting relation, let alone marriage.28

24 See Giovanni Testori, Il senso della nascita: Colloquio con Don Luigi Giussani (Milan: Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, 1980). 25 Nietzsche wrote, “Fear is the original and basic feeling of man; from fear everything is explicable, original sin and original virtue. From fear my own virtue too has grown, and it is called: science” (TSZ, 414). 26 David L. Schindler, Ordering Love: Liberal Societies and the Memory of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011). 27 Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000). 28 Stephanie Coontz’s history of marriage defines what she means by love as only “something . . . irrational” and transient. Coontz, Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 7. This The last consequence I want to indicate is violence. Of the many forms of violence,

perhaps the most drastic is the hate for those who, like the infant and the grandparent, cannot

deny the memory of their own sonship, or alternatively, for those who choose not to deny this

memory. The one for whom the mystery of his own birth, his own childhood, informs his self-

conception and his actions is perceived as a criminal—as someone who does not want other

human beings to be mature, free individuals—whose worldview must be mocked and radically

silenced.29

2. The Mystery of Birth

The connection between true childlikeness and acknowledging the mystery of birth

reveals the most fundamental and permanent characteristic of human persons: we are made and

we depend, that is, we are loved into being. The memory of birth is the memory of the mystery

of our having been desired. The filial form of the person signals that “to be” is to be loved, to be

generated not only at the beginning, but at every moment. The mystery of birth reveals that life is

a gift, that the person continually belongs to something greater. The person, as life itself, is not

born from himself, does not make himself (even if he participates in his own being once he

exists) and does not have himself as his own destiny. The new beginning—playfulness,

innocence, and the capacity to say “yes”—that Nietzsche indicated as characteristic of

childlikeness, is, contrary to what he said, the concrete expression of the mystery of one’s own

ongoing being born, one’s permanent being desired and generated, and one s acceptance of this

perception of love is assumed in Wallerstein’s and Root’s work, and for the latter “the objective of the family is not to provide the child with happiness, but with ontological security” (Root, Children of Divorce, 96). For a concise introduction to meaning of love, see Antonio Prieto, “Eros and Agape: The Unique Dynamics of Love,” in The Way of Love: Reflections on Pope Benedict XVI's Encyclical Deus Caritas Est, ed. Livio Melina and Carl A. Anderson (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006): 212–26. 29 Romano Guardini, “Power and Responsibility: A Course of Action for the New Age,” in The End of the Modern World, trans. Elinor C. Briefs (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 1998), 117–220. love, this dependence. Yet, it is not possible to be fully persuaded that one’s filial existence is an

expression of a constitutive, loving relation until one discovers the presence of God and the

mystery of God within the human wills of one’s parents. The biological, ontological, and

spiritual meanings of the mystery of birth are indeed rooted in its theological meaning. Let us

now look at this fourfold meaning of the mystery of birth.

The biological meaning, perhaps the most obvious but not the least important, reveals

that life, the fruit of the loving union between a father and a mother, is given to the child with

and through a corporeal, organic existence. One’s very body continually refers one back to one’s

birth insofar as one’s bodily being is truly one’s own: to be born is to be given to oneself. The

body reminds us that one’s being is what is most proper to oneself. Simultaneously, the body

reminds us that this life we possess is a life received. This reception has to do both with the

moment of conception and with the entirety of one’s historical existence. Just as one cannot give

birth to oneself or completely control one’s bodiliness at will, so one cannot exist without

receiving the light, love, and language that enable one to see, create, and speak.

Our corporeality reflects a second, ontological meaning of the mystery of birth. The child comes into existence from his parent’s nuptial union and, as it was for all who came before him, he sees that his own being remains distinct from this origin. In an additional reflection of its origin, his being is itself revealed as a dual unity: the child’s “to-be,” his existing, is both unique to him and common to everything that exists. Though we soon come to learn that we are human beings, we never cease to grapple with what seems to be the truest and most beautiful mystery about us: that we are. What we are—human beings—is not deducible from the mystery that we are, and this mysterious irreducibility of our being (esse) to our human nature brings to a quick

end the temptation to believe that what we are lies simply at the total disposal of our reason and will. The mystery of birth thus reveals that we are irreducible to our human nature and that our

being, while representing our perfection, is not ultimately responsible for what we are.

The mystery of birth also has a spiritual meaning. Ours is, in fact, the birth of a spirit; that is, of someone who becomes aware of himself in a free and affective response to the other.

The finite spirit grows insofar as he listens to, discourses with, and freely dwells in the source that generates him. The process of discovering who we are takes place through life’s riches as well as its dangers, failures, and tragedies. To be born is to be given to oneself, to be free, with the task of reaching one’s destiny. This spiritual sense also reveals that birth encompasses both a historical circumstance (the chronological beginning of life) and a permanent dimension of existence. All the so-called rebirths one experiences after having been born, such as falling in love, becoming a father or mother, being forgiven, and so on, both express and deepen the mystery of one’s own birth. In fact, these “rebirths” reveal why being born is worthwhile. These events connect us to the origin of life in a way that is as novel and unprecedented as it is ancient and familiar.

The spiritual meaning of birth opens up the last layer, the theological meaning insofar as it discloses that the finite spirit cannot exist without an ultimate origin and destiny that is other from itself, This aspect, which is perhaps the most difficult to perceive, is illuminated when we recall the surprise that greets the news of a child coming into existence. This surprise is, at its core, a signal of the child’s relationship with the ultimate source from which it is given to the child to be. The justification for pointing to this theological meaning (as opposed to forcing an interpretation on a neutral event) is underscored when we recall that the child is a new person, a new spirit, who cannot be reduced either to his own parents or to the biological process through which he came into being. Births that do not come from a genuine act of love between a man and a woman do not call into question this experience of wonder; rather, they presuppose it. We can

perceive the contours of evil only thanks to the light of the good. The source of wonder

transcends human shortcomings. Moreover, the light of a new existence has within it the capacity

to correct from within the meager measure behind its conception.

Irreducible to parents and biological laws, the child, therefore, is born into a solitude that

no human companionship, not even that of his own parents, can eliminate. This original solitude

is not the Nietzschean loneliness, however; it is rather a sign of a deeper communion.30 The child

is placed in a dialogue with the ultimate origin of existence, which theology has always

expressed through the term “God” and who, through Christ, we have learned to call Father. The

irreducibility of original solitude, forming a constitutive element of the person, also indicates that

the relationship with God is found at the chronological beginning of one’s existence and at every

moment thereafter. We are not our own (1 Cor 6:19). This is why, as we saw in Nietzsche, the

claim that one is the creator of one’s own life is tantamount to denying God the Father. The

theological meaning of birth grounds not only the ontological and spiritual meanings—God is

the reason for what we are, and him in whom we discover who we are—but also, to return to the

beginning, the somatic meaning. The body’s sheer existence, while expressing the difference

from God who is pure spirit, also reveals the divine, original generosity. From within its finitude,

the body reflects in its own way divine life through the interpersonal relationships of man and

wife, parents and children. Furthermore, our historical existence, precisely as existence in time,

images the unmoving movement of the eternal being. Rather than an arc stretching from

nothingness to the unknown void, the mystery of birth discloses that our corporeal and historical

30 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans. Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2006), 146–56; Carl Anderson and José Granados García, Called to Love: Approaching John Paul II's Theology of the Body (New York: Doubleday, 2009). existence is a movement towards the giver with the hope that the relation with that giver may

confirm our finite “be-ing.”

The memory of the mystery of one’s own birth therefore is the lived, grateful awareness of the ongoing reception—and reciprocation—of life, love, and meaning. The human person is

because life is given to him gratuitously, and he is called to become fruitful through the

reciprocation of this gift. This, however, is not enough. The gift of being is given to each person

through the love of his parents. As Karol Wojtyla wrote, “Giving birth begins with unity and

aims at unity. In this love consists.”31 Love is a fruitful unity. Let us turn our attention to this issue.

3. Love’s Indwelling

What does it mean that love is a fruitful unity? As Nietzsche’s account allows us to see,

our culture tends to understand unity as something freely brought into existence by two

fundamentally equal and autonomous human wills whenever they feel the desire to live an

intimate life together for the purpose of helping each other fulfill their personal lives.32

Wallerstein suggests that this perception of love and marriage has “created a new kind of society

that offers greater freedom and more opportunities for many adults.”33 Sociologists and

historians of marriage like Stephanie Coontz, Wallerstein, and Giddens are aware that this

31 Karol Wojtyla, Radiation of Fatherhood, in The Collected Plays and Writings on Theater, trans. Boleslaw Taborski (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), p. 354. 32 This being the case, it matters little if one interprets love as an emotion or as a human reality with some relation to the divine. Giddens’s definition of intimacy puts it very clearly: “Intimacy is above all a matter of emotional communication, with others and with the self, in a context of interpersonal equality.” Anthony Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 130. Since for Giddens, the promise of intimacy requires the promise of autonomy, democracy is the ideal that governs and rules intimate relations (ibid., 188). For Nietzsche’s understanding of marriage see his TSZ, 182. 33 Wallerstein, Unexpected Legacy, p. 297. perception of love as intimacy is inseparable from a culture of divorce. They all think that,

although marriage has become a very fragile and insurmountably transient reality, we are now

better off with our enhanced freedom.34 Of course, no one wants to go through a divorce, and no

one wishes it for anyone else. Yet, the appreciation of the self as autonomous will and of love as

transient, irrational feeling is so harmonious with our current cultural understanding—liberal

democracy—that, despite the fact that this conception of love contains the seeds of its own

demise, very few are willing to question it. To do so would entail a comprehensive re-conception

of the contemporary horizon of meaning and the concrete social way of life in Western liberal

democracies.

To elucidate the unity of the event of love while recognizing the role that one’s will plays

in it, one must not forget the mystery of one’s own birth. Just as one is given to oneself, so what

makes a man and a woman love each other does not begin (or end) with them. They are given to

each other.35 We can see this already at the very beginning of their relation. The affective

preference that a man and a woman discover for each other at a certain point in their lives is

deeper than a biological, emotional, or ideological attraction. Within this affective preference, as

34 Coontz asks at the beginning of her book: “If marriage was about love and lifelong intimacy, why would people marry at all if they couldn’t find true love? What would hold a marriage together if love and intimacy disappeared? How could household order be maintained if marriages were based on affection rather than on male authority?” (Coontz, Marriage, a History, 8). At the end of her study she concludes: “As all these barriers to single living and personal autonomy gradually eroded [namely: 1. “enormous and innate differences between men and women”; 2. “the ability of relatives, neighbors, employers, and government to regulate people’s personal behavior and penalize nonconformity”; 3. “unreliable birth control and harsh penalties for illegitimacy”; and 4. “women’s legal and economic dependence on men and men’s domestic dependence on women”], society’s ability to pressure people into marrying, or keep them in a marriage against their wishes, was drastically curtailed. People no longer needed to marry in order to construct successful lives or long-lasting sexual relationships. With that, thousands of years of tradition came to an end” (Coontz, Marriage, a History, 307–8). 35 If one pays close attention to the human experience of love, the lovers cannot but let questions such as these emerge: Who gave the other to me? Why does this love continue? Who keeps the other with me? What does this love affirm? Faithfulness to these questions requires not ascribing the ultimate responsibility for the spouses’ love to the spouses themselves. Plato would say, lies the call of eternal beauty.36 The experience every lover has is captured

masterfully by the French Catholic writer Paul Claudel when he puts on the lips of Don Rodrigo,

the main character of The Satin Slipper, these words about Doña Prouheze, the woman he loves but cannot marry:

Did I say it was her soul alone I loved? It is her whole self. And I know that her soul is immortal, but the body is not less so. And the two together make the seed which is destined to flower in another garden. . . . And do you think that her body alone could enkindle in mine such longing [for her]? What I love in her is not at all what can be dissolved and escape me and be far away, and some time cease to love me; it is what causes herself to be herself and brings forth life to my kisses and not death!37

If the source of the lovers’ affection, just as the source of their very persons, lies deep

within their love and leads beyond it, how could the wills and choices of the spouses fully

account for their union? They, of course, play a role. However, rather than a “creative” role, it is

the acceptance and following of a love that is given to the spouses and asks them to respond to it

in and through the love they have for each other. This is why Balthasar writes of the moment of

the ceremony: “When they make their promises, the spouses are not relying on themselves—the

shifting songs of their own freedom—but rather on the form that chooses them [ultimately

Christ] because they have chosen it, the form to which they have committed themselves in their

act as persons.”38

36 Plato, Symposium 202d–204c. Diotima, initiating Socrates into the meaning of eros, recounts that eros (born from penia and poros) has to do with the desire for deathlessness, begetting in the beautiful, and, furthermore, seeing the beautiful itself. Moving “from the beauty of the bodies, and passing through pursuits and beautiful lessons,” the educated lover reaches the “contemplation of the eternal beauty” itself, which bestows his poverty with the gift of an unexpected fruitfulness. The always-poor eros is to be gifted with “generating the truth.” For Plato, the true lover is he who “holds the beautiful one in memory” and is thus able to recognize the invisible harmony that gives its form to the visible. In this sense we can say that the memory of the beautiful one makes everything new because it allows one to see things in the light of that form from which every being (becoming), speech, and person receive their splendor. 37 Paul Claudel, The Satin Slipper, or the Worst Is Not the Surest, trans. John O'Connor (London: Sheed and Ward, 1932), p. 37. Emphasis mine. 38 , Seeing the Form, vol. 1 of The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1982), p.27–28. If, as revealed by the experience of the lovers’ initial preference and of the beginning of

their married existence, we cannot reduce human love to an event involving only the two of

them, how can we specify the meaning of love? Faithfulness to the experience of love suggests

this initial and synthetic answer: love is the affective recognition of the truth of another, a

recognition that carries within itself all of the lover’s human personhood and sets the one who

loves on the path to the fulfillment of the needs that constitute every human person.39 To love is

thus to affirm the other, that is, to recognize what the other is—a gift—and to embrace the other

because the other is. This affirmation of the other is also a rejoicing in the other’s presence.

There are many forms of delighting in the other and seeking to affirm the other because he or she is. The purest of these forms is perhaps the simple affirmation, “It is good for you to be.” To say to the other “it is good that you are” and to enjoy gratuitously the other’s being includes two moments: First, one seeks union with the other who has been given to oneself. This dimension of love, which indicates one’s need for the other and desire to be one with the other, is the erotic dimension. The second, inseparable dimension of love is normally called agape. In this sense, love is the energy to be for the other and to affirm the other gratis (agape). Both dimensions need each other. Without agape, eros becomes an egotistic affirmation of self. Without eros, agape soon becomes the denial of self.40 The affirmation of the other is therefore a welcoming within

oneself of all of the other as other.

Before proceeding, however, we need to be aware that precisely because in love one

affirms the other’s being, one acknowledges and enjoys all of being in and through the other

person. This link between the person one loves and all that is (God and the world) has two crucial implications. First, the “intimacy” proper to love is one that, in and with the beloved, is

39 Luigi Giussani, L'io, il potere, le opere: Contributi da un'esperienza (Genoa: Marietti 1829, 2000), p. 66–67. 40 Benedict XVI, Deus caritas est, no. 10 (AAS 98 [2006], 226). open to and seeks the whole. The love for a particular person contains and opens up to the whole

world and all of history. Second, because of their constant being made by the divine source, both

the persons in love and their love itself acquire a sacramental dimension. One who is aware that

the other is given to oneself knows that in responding to the other, one is also responding to the

divine mystery who gives each one to the other. What is at stake in nuptial love is the call of and

to a greater Love. Learning to say to the other“it is good for you to be” sets one on the long path

to realizing that the goodness of the other’s presence and of one’s love for the other rests in the

ongoing, divine decision to let be both the other and one’s union with the other. Thus, we cannot

love truly without letting gratitude for the one who gave us the other form every action, thought,

and desire for the beloved. Rather than alienating, the discovery and acknowledgment of the

divine depth enables human love to become finally human and freeing. Love becomes human

because, with all its failures, it is nonetheless lived in relation with its source and meaning, and

because in loving this way, one deals with oneself and the other in the light of the mystery of

one’s own birth.

If the affective recognition of the other seeks the gratuitous unity with the other through

whom one is opened to God and to the totality of all that is, how are we to understand the unity

proper to love? The foregoing discussion elucidated (nuptial) love as the affective affirmation of

the other, a being for and with the other that is mindful of his or her coming from and walking

towards God. The unity of nuptial love therefore is more than a sheer reference or a sharing of

worldviews and plans for the future. The unity of love in which spouses are given to each other

is best characterized by the theological term indwelling. Indwelling is the highest form of union

because it consists precisely in being oneself in the other. The spatial preposition “in” refers to the spiritual relationship of love according to which one forms part of the identity of the other. One does not conceive of oneself without the other. Were we simply self-referential loners, one’s need for and union with the other would always be secondary to oneself. Yet, since we are constantly being given to ourselves, union with another fulfills the promise of communion contained in love’s unity and for which the person is made. In the union of indwelling, the beloved forms part of the lover’s self as other, not as an extension of the lover, and vice versa.

When this conception of indwelling elucidates the mystery of love’s union, we see that this being-in-the-other is, contrary to what one fears, exactly the way in which one becomes oneself.

The more one belongs to another, the more one is oneself. Precisely because, in God’s choice of one for the other, the spouses give themselves to each other—that is, each lets the other be part of the unity that defines him or her—married love in a certain way participates in the mystery of divine love, which is a perichoretic communion of persons. When spouses love, albeit in a way infinitely dissimilar to divine love, they too give themselves freely. Freedom in this case is not taken to be a synonym of choice. It speaks rather of the God-given capacity to recognize and adhere to what is, according to the entirety of the truth of being. Freedom is a “sacred yes” to the truth of being, that of oneself and of the other, in its totality.

4. Gift of Freedom

While both spouses consent to the same love, the “yes” each one gives is, nevertheless, different from the other’s. Seeing the sameness and difference in their respective affirmations requires dealing with the ontological roots of married life. Elucidating the concrete unfolding of each one’s “yes” with respect to the other’s will also help us understand what is at stake when married life is broken and what happens to the persons affected. So that we take full advantage of what we have seen so far regarding the constitutive

mystery of one’s own birth, and yet avoid confusing the task of being husband or wife, father or

mother, with a culturally determined “role,” we will describe the persons of husband and wife in

terms of “gift.” Being gift, both husband and wife as individuals represent a human person, that

is, they each possess the complete human nature—albeit not in the sense that each as man or

woman already contains the other and hence could replace the other or do without him or her.

Yet, while granting their individual integrity, man and woman incarnate the same gift of being

differently. The unity proper to love, to be a real union, requires that they participate in it

differently. How can we elucidate this difference of the same?

First, exploring how both spouses receive themselves as gifts from the original source

allows us to see what their consents have in common. As ongoing-ly being given, each one is a

gift that is constituted by both a “being” and a “no-thing.” Instead of “being” and “no-thing,” we

could use Ferdinand Ulrich’s terminology to speak of the “wealth” and “poverty” of the gift. The

“wealth” of the gift is precisely that of “being,” that is, of participating in the fullness of God’s

being as other from him. At the same time, because the person simply participates in being and

thus is not self-subsistent, the gift is also a “no-thing.” The “poverty” of the gift resides in its not

being everything. Both being/wealth and no-thing/poverty bring to light a different aspect of the

same concrete gift. The gift’s “no-thing” (poverty) emphasizes the reception of being and the

“being’s” gift (wealth) underscores the received being. As revealed by the mystery of birth,

because of their prior relation to God and to each other in God, the reception of being is

primordial in both man and woman.41

41 Joseph Ratzinger, Daughter Zion: Meditations on the Church’s Marian Belief, trans. John M. McDermott (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1983). Second, Ulrich’s anthropology of childhood suggests that, ontologically speaking,

whereas the unity of soul and body of the woman represents receptivity more clearly, the unity of

soul and body of the man represents giving more distinctly.42 Woman represents the being made

of the gift and man the being made of the gift. Yet they do not do so unilaterally. Man’s giving himself, his being-gift, is also the reception of the woman. To give oneself is to receive the other within oneself. Woman’s reception of man is also her gift of herself—her being-gift. One, in fact, does not welcome another until one entrusts oneself to this other.

In light of this , then, we could say that the task of freely living out married love prescribes that each of the spouses says “yes” to the totality of wealth and poverty that each one is, to their union, and to their life together. Ulrich helps us realize that reception of the gift of nuptial love, the gift itself, and reciprocation of the gift are inseparable from the spouses’ avowal

of the finitude of their own beings. The reciprocal, asymmetrical relation between the spouses is

in fact determined by the confession of their specific finitudes: of the way each one of them is

(wealth) and is-not (poverty). The joyful confession of each spouse’s own finitude is made both

to himself or herself and to the other. Since both are constituted by their intrinsic, loving

dependence on God, giver of all that is good, to confess their finitude consists in recognizing this

life-giving dependence on God. The joyful and grateful avowal of their own finitude is crucial

not only for the truth of their nuptial relationship but also for the fruit of their love: the child. The

child’s existence, in fact, is hidden within the mystery of his parents’ love. It is at this very depth

of dependence on God that the spouses’ freedom meets the height of its dramatic nature.

42 Ferdinand Ulrich, Der Mensch als Anfang: Zur philosophischen Anthropologie der Kindheit (Freiburg: Johannes Verlag, 1970). It is beyond our scope to offer here a systematic presentation of Ulrich’s thought, thus we will only bring to our discussion some helpful elements. For Ulrich the terms “poverty” and “wealth” are a translation of his account of Aquinas’s intuition that “esse significat aliquid completum et simplex sed non subsistens.” Aquinas, De Potentia Dei, q. 1, a. 1, ad 1. See also his masterpiece, Ulrich, Homo Abyssus: Das Wagnis der Seinsfrage, 2nd ed. (Freiburg: Johannes Verlag, 1998). Concretely specifying the difference between the husband’s and wife’s finitudes entails

pondering how the twofold dimension of the gift (the “no-thing” and the “being”) plays itself out

in the dynamic unity of love. Let us first consider the case in which the gift of self is informed by

the recognition of one’s own finitude. The “richness” of the husband becomes concrete and real

through the wife’s allowing him to be received in her, who is different from him. Woman reveals

to man his richness—his representing the positivity of being—as poverty, that is, as a received

richness. In the relation with the woman, man discovers his richness as poverty. At the same

time, the wife lives the mystery of her receptivity through the husband’s abandonment of himself

to her. Through man’s gift to her, woman’s poverty is revealed to be a rich receptivity, rather

than sheer passivity waiting for technological manipulation. The husband reveals her poverty as

wealth. To put it more concisely: In giving herself through welcoming her husband’s gift, the

wife reveals to the husband his wealth as poverty. In receiving his wife through the gift of

himself, the husband reveals to the wife her poverty as wealth. In the unity of love proper to

marriage, both spouses discover that each one is both rich (“being”) and poor (“no-thing”), albeit

differently. They also discover that the full extent of what they are does not come to light except

through this ongoing, reciprocal relation that says “yes” to the full truth of their beings.

Therefore, finitude and difference are found to mutually entail one another, insofar as the

respective emphases on giving and receiving found in man and woman indicate the need of

another in order to be oneself truly. It is precisely through the relation of difference—from each

other and, theologically, from God—that we can perceive the goodness proper to our finitude.

What happens when the spouses do not respect the gift-character of their being? Bearing in mind that rejections of finitude exist in various degrees and forms, we can say synthetically: In man, the rejection of the truth of his finitude takes the form of an exaltation of finitude. In woman, it takes the form of a denial of finitude. When the man wishes to represent only giving,

he absolutizes his finitude, for in his refusal to receive he rejects the ongoing source of his very

being. In doing so, man forgets both that the capacity to give is given to him and that in giving

himself he receives. The giving that is oblivious of its own poverty (in being and in action)

becomes a technological “making.” If we think of the child, rather than begetting, the father

would “produce” another equal to him and interpret the woman’s gift as sheerly passive.43

Therefore, instead of avowing his finitude, the husband “disposes of” the wife when he uses her

poverty to absolutize his finitude.

For her part, the woman, rather than absolutizing finitude, exalts her power and so

“denies” her finitude when she does not wish to receive from the husband. Rather than receiving,

she will take from the husband what she needs. When she denies her own finitude, the giving and

receiving proper to the wife also become a technological making. She would no longer conceive;

she would “have” or “make” a child. When she does not avow her own finitude, the wife

“eliminates” the husband. She uses his wealth (“being”) to deny her receptivity.

The absolutization of finitude (man) and the denial of finitude (woman) are two sides of

the same erroneous perception of what it means to be. Saying “no” either to one’s own poverty

(absolutization of finitude) or to one’s own wealth (denial of finitude) is the attempt to be and act

without acknowledging that one owes one’s being to God. The individual remains enclosed

within history, and his or her fulfillment and greatness are reduced to the perpetual carrying out

of future possibilities. Under the guise of love, therefore, the “gift” of self is yet another

expression of the will to power. Yet, to build power upon the rejection of one’s own “being gift”

43 This “making” can be either egotistic and use the other to its own advantage or, as we see, e.g., in the case of sperm donors, deceivingly generous. See the recent study of Elizabeth Marquardt, Norval D. Glenn, and Karen Clark, My Daddy’s Name is Donor: A New Study of Young Adults Conceived Through Sperm Donation (New York: Broadway Publications, 2010). is to identify one’s own finitude with nothingness. From this point of view, instead of love and

fecundity, what takes place in marriage is a blossoming of dis-unity, that is, of no-thing—since

only when there is unity is there something or someone. The rejection of one’s own finitude and

the transformation of gift into power is the source of marital breakdown.

When the spouses witness to their finitude in their reciprocal, asymmetrical gift, their

love is rooted in an eternity that has not been absorbed by their finitude. If, mindful of the

mystery of being given, the spouses accept their finitude by receiving in giving (husband) and by

giving in receiving (wife), they become someone, a “thou” for each other; they are no longer

tools used by each other to deny their own finitude. Only when the integrity of their finitude,

their gift of being while not being God, is respected can their union be a fruitful indwelling—as opposed to mere biological re-production. The child is not a product of the parents’ love whose appearance and features are programmed at will. He is the fruit of the spouses’ love and the objective sign of their unity. The child is a finite gift, and as such, like his parents, he enjoys the

same wealth and poverty of the gift of being. Yet, if we look at the child from the point of view

of his relation with his parents, we can say that the child is a gift in the twofold sense just

mentioned, that is, as fruit and unity.44 As gratuitous, albeit desired, fruit of their love, the child

reminds the spouses of the gift character of their own existence. The presence of their child

reminds them that, just as is the case for this child, so they are also gifts. The child reveals the

superabundant nature of love. As a sign of his parents’ unity, the child incarnates the event of

love that the union of the parents is. That the child incarnates this unity also means that his

identity abides in the place of love to which his parents have been entrusted, that bond of love

that, rooted in God’s love, is greater and more intimate than their love for each other. When they

44 Alain Mattheeuws, Les “dons” du mariage: Recherche de theólogie morale et sacramentelle (Paris: Culture et Vérité, 1996), 529–65. exchanged vows, the spouses entrusted themselves to each other by receiving each other from

the one who makes them and their love be. “Place,” therefore, does not simply mean the home

where the child lives and grows—which itself is also expressive of the spouses’ mutual

indwelling. Rather, the parents’ unity of love is the place in which the constitutive relation of the

child with God, which defines the person of the child, is established. When parents divorce,

children lose their place in being, that is, they are at a loss in relating to the love that gives

meaning and unity to life. This loss, however, is not ultimate because the source (both the

parents and God, who is ultimately responsible for the parents’ and children’s coming to be)

cannot be deleted. Nevertheless, losing one’s place in being radically puts into question life’s

meaning, that is, the unity between oneself, others, the world, and the divine source of all that is.

Before a divorce takes place much has already been decided. If the parents deny their

own finitude in the ways elucidated earlier, it will be very difficult for the child to distinguish

between the paternal origin and the divine origin. As Kafka said in his tragic and beautiful letter

to his own father, the father will be the “measure of everything.”45 If the parents do not

acknowledge their own finitude, denying that their own beings consist in a dynamic of reception

and reciprocation with the transcendent source, the child may conceive of himself as coincident

with his paternal origin. Without an at least implicit acknowledgment of the dependence of his

being, the child will become another lonesome “maker,” only to further the oblivion of the

mystery of birth. In this case, the child will go against his own nature, by which he is the

guardian of being. Rather than guard being, that is, rather than keep alive for his parents the

memory and the task of the gift of being, he will perpetuate the forgetfulness of being. When

instead the parents say “yes” to their own finitude in the asymmetrical gift to one another, they

45 Franz Kafka, Dearest Father, trans. Hannah Stokes and Richard Stokes (Berkshire: Oneworld Classics, 2010), p. 24. teach the child the intrinsic joy of his own destiny. They teach him to discover and live the nostalgia for the eternal beauty that constitutes every human person. In this way they not only welcome the child as a gift within the communion of their love, but also, more importantly, they release the child into freedom. They put him on the path of life, that is, in the dramatic relation

(both historical and ontological) with the giver of all that is. It is thus that they help the child to be true to his own nature. The child will grow to be a “sacred yes” said in response to the divine

“yes” that the gift of his very existence embodies.

Having elucidated the childlike form of the human person and the nature of the dynamic and fecund unity of spousal love, let us now look, as a final step in our reflection, to the sacrifice proper to this unity.

5. Love’s Challenge

If we transpose to the anthropological level what has been said with regard to the ontology of the person and the nature of love, we see that growing in the truth of love is also a sacrifice. Because the spouses’ own beings and the love that is given to them are entrusted to their freedom, and their freedom is always tempted to stop the dynamic proper to the gift, to affirm the truth of being is also a sacrifice. One needs to let go of one’s untrue conception of what it means to be, and instead affirm the goodness of one’s finitude (i.e., of not being God), all the dimensions of the gift of being, and the fruitful love to which one has been entrusted.

Sacrifice seems unnatural and nonsensical to a mentality that conceives of love as an irrational emotion and of marriage as the fruit of an act of autonomous, creative wills. In contrast to this notion of love, human experience teaches that remaining true to what one is represents a continuous movement towards being and away from nothingness. To sacrifice the claim to be one’s own origin is to move beyond falsehood into the fullness of truth. It is within this fullness of love that one’s own finitude is confirmed and freed from the nothingness that the disavowal of finitude cannot but bring forth. To grasp concretely the sacrifice entailed both in keeping awake the memory of one’s constitutive sonship and in the affirmation of the gift character of finitude, I would now like to reflect on three related tasks proper to the unity of love. These tasks will help us perceive that, as we can see fully only in hindsight, to sacrifice is to pass through appearance to a deeper, liberating belonging both to the one who accounts for all that is and to all that he has given us.

The first task is that of learning to say “mine.” As we know, this possessive pronoun indicates a relation of belonging. In one sense, something belongs to me because I have obtained it through certain means; for example, the house I live in is mine because I built it, or because I bought it or am renting it. In a deeper sense, the relation of belonging indicates that something is mine because it came from me. An artist can say that a painting, a piece of music, or a book is his because it came from him. No real artist, however, would claim himself to be the absolute origin of what he creates. Inspiration, we all know too well, does not come as frequently or as profusely as we would like. If we turn to personal relations, the difficulty of saying “mine” becomes apparent. To call someone “my” friend, spouse, or child implies accepting that I cannot completely reduce the other to myself. Of course, the friend, the spouse, or the child would not be mine if I did not play a fundamental role in the relation. Yet, one does not say “mine” truly until one recognizes that these persons and relationships are gifts. This is even more evident in our relationships with parents and grandparents: they are ours because they are first given to us, and then we welcome them. The sacrifice involved in learning to say “mine” truly, and hence to enjoy the owning proper to love, is twofold. First, it involves recognizing that loneliness is not ultimate. To be truly given to oneself is, in a certain sense, to be the origin of oneself and one’s own acts. Yet,

one is the origin of oneself and of one’s acts as a child, that is, as given to oneself. Whereas the

fact of being truly given “to oneself” may make one desire to be “alone,” that one is more

fundamentally “given” to oneself elicits the search for that relation with the original giver within

which one can finally be “oneself.” If, as we elucidated, the memory of one’s own birth—one’s

being desired and ongoing being generated—reveals that solitude is always relation with one’s ultimate origin, then to perceive loneliness as ultimate is to embrace closedness. One would want to be simply by oneself.

Second, to say “mine” entails accepting the risk of losing. Realizing that time, unexpected circumstances, betrayals, and death seem to carry everything away—not simply what

one may make or beget, but more importantly one’s very self—one could simply forego any

attempt to own. More commonly than resignation, the fear of losing oneself drives one to secure

the relation of belonging in ways that always end up undermining it. Trying to prevent the

unmanageable and unexpected from happening, or to eliminate the dramatic nature of freedom

through mechanisms of various kinds for the sake of securing the other’s love, prevents the

possibility of saying “mine.” In contrast, accepting the risk of losing oneself opens one to

receiving oneself again in a sort of rebirth. It is indeed the case that in begetting, man loses

himself in the child. Yet, as Karol Wojtyla says in his play, Radiation of Fatherhood, the child

gives man back to himself, and in doing so constitutes the man as both father and bridegroom.46

Thus, to accept the child as his, the father (who in the play is called Adam) has to recognize the

mediation of the bride and mother. She has also helped him come to terms with the difficulty of

46 Wojtyla, Radiation of Fatherhood, p. 341. his own fatherhood, that is, with accepting that his fatherhood is not absolute. As the play

describes it, “woman” (the only name of the wife we are given) enables Adam to accept that his

fatherhood radiates a primordial fatherhood: that of God the Father. Accepting his own childhood, the father enables the woman to become spouse and mother.

Monica, the daughter, expresses to Adam, her putative father, what every child and lover

longs for: “I want only to pass into you always so that you can find me in your heart and then

think ‘mine’ about me.”47 The secret of the word “mine,” Wojtyla suggests, is to choose the

other in oneself, that is, “to accept what makes my world, what is in me and what is of me.”48 By

constantly choosing the other in oneself—as opposed to choosing simply oneself, or making the

other an image of oneself, or a tool with which to reject one’s own finitude—one learns that the

sacrifice entailed in saying “mine” is learning to possess gratuitously. One possesses truly when

one recognizes that the other is given to oneself (even through oneself) and when this other is let

be, that is, loved with the desire but not the claim of being loved back. In true possession, the

goal of belonging is not simply one’s own good but the good of both, which is greater than the

individuals involved. To say “mine,” therefore, entails saying “you” to the other in the grateful

recognition that there is a common thread that unites the two.

The first task naturally leads us to the second: learning the meaning of time. Since a gift,

if truly given, is never claimed back, to say “mine” implies entering the realm of the irrevocable.

This term should be understood literally and not legally. Irrevocability means that love is a

unique call to participate in the divine love that does not deceive. This love will not be called

back (i-re-vocable). Irrevocability therefore suggests a peculiar union of time and eternity

according to which the flow of time and the history of human love are not ultimately governed

47 Wojtyla, Radiation of Fatherhood, p. 353. 48 Wojtyla, Radiation of Fatherhood, p. 354. by the spouses. Still, for this peculiar union of time and eternity to occur, it must be embraced by

human freedom. In light of this, it is possible to see why the exchange of vows and having a

child are feared: as gifts, both events represent the introduction in history of something whose

end (telos and chronos) and unfolding are not at the disposal of the receiving persons. If, instead,

they could be called back, rather than being gifts, the vows and children would be outcomes of

transactions, and as such could always change hands.

When the human person is conceived in terms of autonomous will, the union proper to

love knows mainly the future, that is, the possibility of what one can still make.49 Because it

neglects the mystery of birth, the union of love so conceived abandons the past. However, what

is rejected most forcefully is the present, since the present is the event of one’s ongoing being

begotten. If one does not embrace the sacrifice of learning gift’s irrevocability, the future, rather

than being given, must be made; hence those who participate in the unity of love conceive of

themselves and of their lives from the future. In this way, they transform the present into a never-

ending search for sheer newness, and what then matters is that they hastily act towards what they

wish. When we look at it more closely, however, this pursuit reveals itself as the tantalizing form

of boredom. The search for sheer newness, in fact, is triggered when one finds only oneself (or

another equal to oneself) in what one possesses. Yet in spite of this dissatisfaction, one is still

unwilling to discover the gift character of the other and the proper time of gift. Blinded to the

49 The Canadian philosopher George P. Grant (1918–1988) wrote: To enucleate the conception of time as history must then be to think our orientation to the future together with the will to mastery. Indeed the relation between mastery and concentration on the future is apparent in our language. The word ‘will’ is used as an auxiliary for the future tense, and also as the word that expresses our determination to do... We North Americans whose ancestors crossed the ocean were, because of our religious traditions and because this continent was experienced as pure potentiality (a tabula rasa), the people most exclusively enfolded in the conception of time as progress and the exaltation of doing that went with it. We were to be the people who, after dominating two European wars, would become the chief leaders in establishing the reign of technique throughout all the planet and perhaps beyond it. George Parkin Grant, Time as History, in 1970–1988, vol. 4 of Collected Works of George Grant, ed. Arthur Davis and Henry Roper (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), pp. 21–24. otherness of gift, rather than newness one has random repetition of the same. What is truly novel,

instead, speaks of what is definitive (irrevocable) and yet other. It is this novelty in which we can

rest.

The sacrifice of learning to dwell in time, then, is that of living everyday the reception of

the gift of oneself and the other. We see this more clearly in the relationship between parents and

their child. Giving life to the child is not simply a single historical and biological occurrence.

Affirming her own finitude in the relation to her spouse and God, the mother continuously

generates the child because in so doing she introduces her child to the gratuitousness of being.

The father’s ongoing begetting consists in introducing the child to what is, its meaning, and what

has not yet come to be.50 As we all know from experience, the child not only needs to be brought

into life, he also needs to be accompanied on the path of life towards his own destiny. In this

sense father and mother not only point towards the origin but also indicate the telos of existence.

The father does this by leading ahead to the Father from whom comes all that is; the mother by helping the child see that his destiny is love’s overabundant gratuitousness. They do not, however, have at their disposal the specific form that this destiny will have for their child. The child’s relation to God and to others is informed by the way he synthesizes his parents’ unfolding of their specific tasks in being—his mother’s gratuitousness and his father’s indication of origin, path, and telos.51 The ongoing call of love that takes place in history requires therefore the

sacrifice of an ongoing education in the truth of love. This education in the truth that one is given

to oneself with a destiny that awaits one is indeed what the parents offer their children, but it is

also what the unity of their love leads them to if they have the humility to walk the path that the

gift of their own love opens up and traces for them.

50 Wojtyla, Radiation of Fatherhood, p. 354. 51 Angelo Scola, The Nuptial Mystery, trans. Michelle K. Borras (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), p. 239–57. The sacrifice of learning to live in time opens up for us the third and final task: learning to forgive.52 Learning to forgive is the most difficult and yet most needed sacrifice. Forgiveness is a greater mystery than those of one’s own birth and of the unity of love that we have considered here. Although forgiveness is indispensable for human existence, it is not simply at man’s disposal. Only God, the giver of the gift, can forgive. Man’s forgiveness very rarely takes place; most of the time he merely forgets. Yet, to forgive is not to forget what has been done or to ignore the evil that has taken place. We all know that a great evil, whether suffered or committed, is not forgotten. It lurks in one’s memory as resentment, and, when something reawakens its memory, it explodes as anger.

What is it that one is called to forgive? Although it may sound paradoxical, what one is asked to forgive first of all is the other as other from oneself. For many different reasons, it is inevitable that one perceives those with whom one is living (spouse or children) to be unbearable. Their sheer otherness, their worldviews, characters, and temperaments, often seem to contradict one’s own person and to frustrate one’s hopes. Since, as we saw, the other and the union with him is a sign of God’s love, the unbearability of the other sooner or later leads to that of God. It is God whom one can no longer welcome.

Along with his otherness, of course, what must also be forgiven is the evil that the other does, that is, the lie that he has allowed to take place in history and in the unity of love where both one and the other dwell. This lie, whose ultimate root is the oblivion of the mystery of one’s own birth, constantly takes different forms within the life that belongs to the unity of love. There is yet a final layer that most clearly reveals the difficulty entailed in forgiving. Even if at times it

52 Theologically speaking, we could say that if the sacrifice of the first task regards learning to affirm the other for what he is (seeing the other under the light of faith), and the second to walk according to the time the gift discloses (living in hope), this one resides in letting the restoration of unity take place (allowing charity to give to being its true, final form). seems plausible to forgive what others have done, when it comes to one’s own evil, it appears

impossible. We do not know how to forgive ourselves for what we have brought into existence.

We do not know because we cannot rebuild out of our own resources the land we have burnt.

It now emerges that forgiveness, fundamentally, is the event through which the other is

allowed, indeed welcomed, once again to be part of the essential unity of one’s own life. It is that

event through which the unity of one’s own life can be renewed. Since one is not the ultimate origin of oneself or the union of love to which one is entrusted, only God can forgive. As origin of the gift, he is the one who can reconstitute the unity that our evil has broken. The restoration of lost unity, forgiveness, is a foretaste of the resurrection since it allows one to experience in time that what was lost and dead—oneself or the other—can be reborn in the unity with the

source. In God’s forgiveness the human being can forgive, that is, welcome the other as part of

the definition of oneself and hence share life anew. The relation between God’s forgiveness and

ours is not mechanical but engages our freedom: learning to forgive is inseparable from learning

the sacrifice of prayer. To learn to forgive is to embrace the sacrifice of asking that the love of

him who loves one into existence may cancel the ingratitude and the lie that one’s freedom put in

place. It is then that one experiences that both unity and joy remain thanks to that much-needed and humanly impossible miracle: mercy, that is, the love that gives everything anew with a freshness far deeper than that of one’s own birth.

Divorce, the rupture of the unity proper to love, results from the failure to embrace this threefold sacrifice and suffering required by unity: learning to say “mine,” learning to dwell and walk in history, and learning to ask to forgive, that is, to welcome again the other within oneself.

The suffering that divorce inflicts upon children could perhaps be described as innocent suffering. Divorce, in fact, renders the mystery of the child’s birth, of the complete depth of his filiality, opaque. For this reason, it obfuscates for him the very meaning and purpose of his own

existence. Looking at divorce and at this suffering in light of the event of mercy—which unexpectedly renews and deepens the gifts of self, other, and their unity—the task that divorce sets before each of us is precisely that of being, of renewing the memory of one’s own birth. This memory asks the Father who generates each person continuously to renew what human freedom and foolishness have broken. When those who are asked to embrace this suffering live the memory of the mystery of their birth, they will expose the nothingness that our common worldview has generated. This lived memory will be an occasion to rediscover that God, the

Father rich in mercy, is memor nostri and that his memory of our existence, when awaited and sought after, can bring about what to us seems impossible.