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Purification and growth in maturity are called for; and these also pass through the path of renunciation.

That love between man and woman which is neither planned nor willed, but somehow imposes itself upon human beings, was called "eros" by the ancient Greeks. Evidently, "eros" needs to be disciplined and purified if it is to provide not just fleeting pleasure, but a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence, of that beatitude for which our whole being yearns.

True, eros tends to rise "in ecstasy" towards the Divine, to lead us beyond ourselves; yet for this very reason it calls for a path of ascent, renunciation, purification and healing. Love now becomes concern and care for the other.

It is part of love's growth towards higher levels and inward purification that it seeks to become definitive, and it does so in a twofold sense: both in the sense of exclusivity (this particular person alone) and in the sense of being "for ever".

Love embraces the whole of existence in each of its dimensions, including the dimension of time. It could hardly be otherwise, since its promise looks towards its definitive goal: love looks to the eternal.

Love is indeed "ecstasy", not in the sense of a moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey, an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God.

Learn more about this author, Orestes J. Gonzalez.
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