The Second Vatican Council teaches that this conjugal love “embraces the good of the whole person; it can enrich the sentiments of the spirit and their physical expression with a unique dignity and ennoble them as the special features and manifestation of the friendship proper to marriage”.138 For this reason, a love lacking either pleasure or passion is insufficient to symbolize the union of the human heart with God: “All the mystics have affirmed that supernatural love and heavenly love find the symbols which they seek in marital love, rather than in friendship, filial devotion or devotion to a cause. And the reason is to be found precisely in its totality”.139 Why then should we not pause to speak of feelings and sexuality in marriage?
Amoris Laetitia
Notes
- 138. Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, 49. 105
- 139. A. Sertillanges, L’Amour chrétien, Paris, 1920, 174. 106