“In my opinion, the belief that love is a feeling is the most tragic mistake of the modern times. And I believe that this mistake is tragic because we not only think this way, but we also act this way. Does it not seem to us that we love when our blood boils, loins tremble and heart beats faster?” (Cóż to jest miłość, kswojciech.blog.onet.pl, 15.04.2009). Wojtyła would call this stage of love “the love of liking”, or maybe “the love of lust”.
He called this stage of love “beautiful” and thought it was natural and very much needed but – beware! – it is insufficient. One might say that this is a beautiful material from which true love can scarcely be made. Why? Feelings by their very nature are something unstable and uncertain. Can love also be like that? No, it cannot be – Wojtyła answers. Love is kind, gentle… Love never ends. Johnny sees beautiful Eve, draws attention to her eyes, hair, legs, and is convinced he is in love with her and, even more, that he loves her! The problem is that on the second day he sees another, equally beautiful woman, Eve’s friend, Sophie, and… he also falls in love with her. Wojtyła warns against naive, shallow sensuality. He explains it this way: a man can view a woman and a woman can view a man primarily in terms of a value. Sensuality alone is oriented towards the possession of the body and, therefore, its attitude is, first of all, based on sexual desire. (Cf. K. Wojtyła, Love and Responsibility, Boston 2013, pp. 87-89). And this leads to objectification of a person. And one cannot agree with that! Unfortunately, present times are not beneficial to us: “We are living in a culture where there is a necessity of pleasure at all costs. Relationships are also meant to serve pleasure. We should develop and fulfill ourselves through them, and enjoy them. We are willing to forget – what is underlined, for example by Alicja Długołęcka – that the relationship is a choice, a decision of each individual. And this choice is repeated every day, especially, in the time of crisis when it is getting worse between people” (Paweł Goźliński, Jak kochać wystarczająco dobrze?, Gazeta.pl).
Young Bishop Wojtyła points out that the most important thing is to see the value of the person! I want to love you because you are precious to me, you are a gift to me, and not just because you have such a beautiful smile. Plato has already said that there were many beautiful bodies, all of them could be admired, but could all of them be loved the same way? Saint-Exupéry, through the words of the Little Prince, says that there are a lot of wonderful roses, all of them almost the same and, yet, his rose, chosen by him, is the only one and there is no other like her. Wojtyła actually says the same thing. What you will love, you will tame. In some sense, it will already be yours. You cannot just leave, forget or reject it. But what to do when we are dealing with the person we fell in love with? “We fell in love with”, that is, we really love ourselves in her. Still at this stage, we are dealing with purely selfish love which tells us to love erroneously, because this loving satisfies me. It must take some time to start loving the person for her own sake. The stage of kindness and spousal love is yet to come.
Spousal Love: Until Death Do Us Part
Karol Wojtyła states that the essence of love consists in the giving of the person who loves to the person beloved. “But love, so to speak, snatches the person from this natural inviolability and incommunicability. For love makes the person want precisely to give himself to another person – to the one he loves. He wants, so to speak, to stop being his own exclusive possession and to become the possession of the other” (Love and Responsibility, p. 108). So it is obvious that the relationship is exclusive. Johnny cannot belong at the same time to Eve, Sophie and Kathy, and Sophie to Joe, Stanley and Henry either. This is a difficult choice to make. The other person is selected, and at the same time she is a “second self”, as though I was chosen in the other and the other in me. I choose, therefore I am responsible. I am responsible for what I have tamed. “For love is never something ready-made, something merely ‘given’ to a woman and a man but, at once, it is always something ‘entrusted’” (Ibid., p.121). Johnny would have made a dramatic mistake if he chose Eve and married her, and thought they were over the hump… No! Now it all begins! “Love in a sense never ‘is’, but only ‘becomes’, depending on the contribution of each person, on their thorough commitment” (Ibid.).
Wojtyła is often accused that the love he speaks about is too difficult, too demanding. The price of true love is a continuous coming out of one’s “self”, from one’s selfishness – there is no other way. This love is a constant dynamism that is created in so far as both parties are making every effort to re-create it.
Wojtyła does not negate the state of falling in love, does not wag his finger to avoid showing affection and tenderness. He is an advocate of love, however, never for the price of lies, the satisfaction of lust, or simply actions masking something that is not love. Karol Wojtyła does not deceive, does not promise, but only warns and wants to protect something that is the essence of love. He is a defender of the truth about love.
Magdalena Siemion
journalist, doctoral student of philosophy at the Pontifical University of John Paul II,
author of a book on love and sexuality in the teachings of John Paul II.
She works at the Intercultural Dialogue Institute of John Paul II in Krakow.