Today's discussion covers the last two sections in chapter two, entitled The Commitment of Freedom and The Education of Love. But before delving into these sections, Peter spent a few minutes summarizing what we have read thus far in chapter two, The Person and Love. Wojtyla begins the chapter with a section on the metaphysical analysis of love. He explores the various facets of love: love as attraction, desire, and goodwill, and he analyzes the bases of sympathy, friendship and comradeship. In this section we reach the milestone page 96, where, as Father Bob has dramatically explained to us, Wojtyla makes history. It is on this page that Wojtyla describes the uniqueness of betrothed love as “gift of self.” In the next section of chapter two, Wojtyla discusses the psychological analysis of love: sense impression and emotion, sensuality, sentiment, and finally the integration of these elements, where in a very beautiful way he ties freedom and truth to the integration of love. The third and last section of the chapter focuses on the ethical analysis of love. Here, Wojtyla coins the phrase “membership in one another” and expounds on choice and responsibility.

Before proceeding with today's discussion, Peter told the group about some tapes of Christopher West (who heads the Archdiocese of Denver's office of marriage and family) that he has been listening to, called “Understanding the Eucharist through John Paul II's Theology of the Body.” One insight Peter shared with the group was especially interesting: when Christ died on the cross, the curtain of the tabernacle was torn in two. [“Then the curtain hanging in the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” Matthew 27.51] What exactly does this mean? In the Jewish temples, the torah rests in the tabernacle, protected by a curtain and only accessible on holy days by the temple rabbis. When Jesus died for our sins, the word became flesh—and now accessible to us all—with the curtain of the tabernacle torn in two.

The Commitment of Freedom

Wojtyla begins this section on p. 135 by stating, “Only true knowledge of a person makes it possible to commit one's freedom to him or her. Love consists of a commitment which limits one's freedom—it is a giving of the self, and to give oneself means just that: to limit one's freedom on behalf of another. Limitation of one's freedom might seem to be something negative and unpleasant, but love makes it a positive, joyful and creative thing. Freedom exists for the sake of love.”

Diane remarked that sometimes love 'goes wrong' because people haven't given up their freedom; they've kept it. Nona added that this relates to the notion of husbands and wives reciprocally submitting to each other. Kevin commented that our notion of freedom must rest in a context of good. If freedom is detached from this context, it is falsifying and shallow, a limited view of freedom that modern secular thinking sells, and not a true freedom.

Wojtyla continues: “Love commits freedom and imbues it with that to which the will is naturally attracted—goodness. The will aspires to the good, and freedom belongs to the will, hence freedom exists for the sake of love, because it is by the way of love that human beings share most fully in the good. This is what gives freedom its real entitlement to one of the highest places in the moral order, in the hierarchy of man's wholesome longings and desires. But man longs for love more than for freedom—freedom is the means and love is the end. He longs however for true love, for only if it is based on truth is a genuine commitment of freedom possible. The will is free, but at the same time it 'is obliged to' seek the good which is congenial to it, it can seek and choose freely, but it is not free from the need to seek and to choose.”

The will is a “creative power,” as Wojtyla frequently mentions. He says that sexual values can 'lay siege' to the will. When the will succumbs to sensual attraction it begins to feel desire for another. Sentiment frees desire of its carnal consumer character, instead focusing on the longing for the other as a human person. “The sexual instinct makes the will desire and long for a person because of the person's sexual value.” The will however does not stop here—it desires the absolute good and unlimited happiness for the other person, atoning for the desire to have the other person and assuming within the framework of betrothed love the responsibility for the other.

The divine aspect of love, Wojtyla explains, is the drive to endow beloved persons with the good, to make them happy. For people of profound faith, this means to desire God for the person. Diane directed us to footnote 33, which reads: We often find in the love of one person for another a discrepancy between the good desired for the beloved and the possibility of realizing it. The lover is not able to bestow immortality on the beloved person—although he desires to and undoubtedly would do so if he were omnipotent. This is the reason why 'what he really wants for the beloved is God'. The empirically inescapable connection between love and the affirmation of life compels us to recognize (as a result of metaphysical interpretation) that in the perspective of the Creative Love the death of personal existences can only be a transition to a higher form of live. Morte fortius caritas.

Peter reflected that these words reminded him of St. John of the Cross, who said that in the twilight of our lives we will be tested in love. Nona commented on how people receive death—embracing it or being terrified of it. We should try to embrace God, to deepen our connection with Christ so that we want so much to be with him. Meredith added that as a spouse, one's mission is to get one's spouse to heaven.

Wojtyla continues: “This is what makes it possible for a man to be reborn because of love, makes him aware of the riches within him, his spiritual fertility and creativity: I am capable of desiring good for another person, therefore I am in general capable of desiring the good. True love compels me to believe in my own spiritual powers. ... When love attains its full dimensions, it introduces into a relationship not only a 'climate' of honesty between persons but a certain awareness of the 'absolute', a sense of contact with the unconditional and the ultimate.”

The Education of Love

In this short section, Wojtyla reflects on the fact that love is never something ready made, something merely 'given' to man and woman. Rather, it is always a task. “Love should be seen as something which in a sense never 'is' but is always only 'becoming', and what it becomes depends upon the contribution of both persons and the depth of their commitment.”

Creativity plays an important role in the sphere of love, as does the work of Divine Grace. “Grace”, he says, “has the power to make straight the paths of human love.”