Communion

The great French writer Leon Bloy once wrote "there is but one real sadness: not to be a saint." On the other hand Gabriel Marcel says that "there is but one sadness: to be alone."

At first sight, these two assertions are completely different, but if we care to penetrate more deeply into what Gabriel Marcel so aptly calls the "mysteries of Being," we shall see that there is a profound, although subtle, link between them. It is the nature of this link that we shall presently examine.

Sin severed man's relation to God and to other men

The saint is precisely he who lives in constant and intimate communion with God, he who does not allow anything or anyone to separate him from God, he who victoriously links to God everything happening to him, sickness or health, poverty or wealth, infamy or fame.

The saint is the person who has conquered the isolation which is created by sin — namely, Original Sin, which has severed the relationship existing between God and man and, as a consequence, the relationship existing between man and man. When Adam and Eve were exiled from the earthly paradise, they were exiled together, and yet this seeming togetherness should not blind us to their isolation from one another.

Original Sin has created a state of separation between man and God, and the whole work of redemption seeks to mend this rupture and to reestablish the triumph of communion.

Communion is not fusion

In order to shed light upon this, let us for a moment contemplate man's nature. Man is the most perfect substance known to us through experience, for he is the most perfect individual that we know. Man can never cease to be himself and become a mere part of something else.

It is quite conceivable that man should cease to exist at the moment of death; but it is thoroughly inconceivable that he could continue to exist, while vanishing as an individual self and being absorbed as a part into another larger reality.

On the other hand, and precisely on account of this selfhood, man is destined to enter into communion with other persons; and it is in and through this communion that he fulfills himself. In order to understand the nature of this fundamental truth, we must liberate ourselves from a prejudice deeply rooted in certain intellectual circles. This prejudice consists in taking for granted that fusion is the prototype of communion.

We cannot insist sufficiently upon the abyss separating the two: when two drops of water fuse and become one, we cannot speak of communion between them, because they have no knowledge that they have become united. Knowledge is the essential presupposition for communion.

Knowledge and love are the greatest forms of communion

So we see that precisely because man is a more perfect substance than any other being known to us through experience, he is capable of entering into communion with other persons. The two great forms of communion are knowledge and love. In knowledge, I spiritually turn toward another person, and then through questioning and answering a spiritual contact is established between us which is unthinkable and impossible in the impersonal world. The climax of communion between persons is reached in love, as we shall see later on.

Now that we are more keenly conscious of man's calling to enter into communion with other personal beings, we are ready to understand why man suffers when he fails to attain it. The anxiety and the despair which are manifested upon so many human faces are expressions of the sorrow a human being feels when he discovers himself to be isolated, to be thrown back upon himself, incapable of establishing a communion with another. Maybe it is not exaggerated to say that the drama of the society in which we live lies in the fact that we put the greatest weight on social contacts, while living in a tragic isolation.

Solitude takes many forms

Let us now examine briefly the various types of solitude which can be found in human life. First, there is a type of solitude which is created by the fact that I happen to be completely and totally alone, physically speaking. There are situations in which this lonesomeness is experienced as a relief: for example, when I am with other persons who are cold and distant toward me. As soon as I am alone once more, I feel that I can breathe again. It is clear that to be alone under such circumstances is a blessing, but we should not infer erroneously that it is always a blessing. Let us recall that solitary confinement is a traditional form of punishment and a particularly refined one, for it throws man back upon himself, forcing him, so to speak, to knock his head against his own limitations.

To be alone can also be linked to a particular type of anxiety. Suppose that I find myself in a great physical danger, isolated on top of a mountain. Suddenly I discover that there is another man sharing my predicament. This gives me a feeling of elation and relief. We shall find some way out; we shall help one another. But quite apart from the possible help that the presence of another human being can give me, the fact that I am no longer alone in the great, cold, impersonal universe creates a totally new situation, a situation in which the possibility of communicating, of talking, warms up the cool objectivity of a world which was made for human presence. Suddenly, I am transported into an intrapersonal space. Let us recall Dante's immense relief, when after a night passed in qualms, he perceived Vergil (not knowing that it was he):

“Have pity upon me, I imploring cried, whether thou be of shades or real men.”

Physical loneliness can also make me realize the victorious transcendence of my love for another person; for even though I am separated from the one I love, I feel that no human power can truly sever the bond uniting us. On the other hand, closely linked to this experience of victory is the acute suffering resulting from the separation itself; we only need recall the deep words of Keats to hisfriend Fanny Brawne: "The very air I breathe is unhealthy without you.”

But we now come to another type of solitude, which is completely different from the first; it is the solitude I experience whenI am with other persons in some sort of social gathering. The fact that one can be totally isolated in the company of other people is proved by innumerable experiences. Man's transcendence over animals, which can be shown in so many ways, is also evidenced by the fact that animals are content with the mere physical presence of other animals. For man, the physical presence of others severed from some sort of spiritual contact is a refined form of suffering. While reading Gabriel Marcel's plays, we have been struck by the fact that his characters complain of solitude, and that these are precisely married people living in apparent communion with one another. In such cases, one can truly speak of a solitary crowd, of people thrown together while remaining in hopeless isolation. Some cocktail parties we have attended bore all the marks of this deceptive communion, this social lie. There is a way of greeting people in which the content of the words used ("I am delighted to see you") is formally denied by the tone of anonymity used. One feels very strongly that the person "delighted to see you" has not focused upon you for a single moment, has treated you as a number, as an object, as a thing, and in no way as an individual person.

Reverence makes possible communion between persons

We should realize that our highly mechanized society constitutes a very real threat to human relationships. More and more we are getting accustomed to seeing other persons as numbers in a multitude and not as real selves, as unique, irreplaceable individuals. From this point of view we can appreciate the depth of Kierkegaard's remark when he says that God does not know crowds; He only knows individuals.

I once received a compliment which I treasure to this very day: someone said "you are the first person I have met in my life who has been willing to listen to me." This remark was a surprise, for I remembered that after listening to my friend, I was at a loss for an answer to his problem. But he did not expect an answer at all; he just wanted to know that there was someone willing to listen, willing to take his problems seriously. Thanks to this person, I understood the nature of one fundamental failure in human relationships: the lack of reverence with which we tend to approach other persons. I noted earlier that reverence is the mother of all virtues. It is also the mother of all human relationships.

Problems are essentially different from mysteries

At this point a distinction borrowed from Gabriel Marcel will help us understand one of the great dangers threatening communion. According to Marcel, we should make a fundamental distinction between problems and mysteries. A problem, he tells us, is an objective difficulty and has two main features or peculiarities: first, it is totally unrelated to myself; it is objective in the scientific sense given to this term. Second, it can be solved and, once solved, it ceases to be a problem at all. It is like a knot that has been untied.

A mystery, on the other hand, is intimately connected with myself, so much so that I cannot approach it adequately without realizing that I myself am involved in it.

Moreover, a mystery can never be solved in the sense of ceasing to be a mystery. An example will illustrate this point. There is evil in the world. According to Marcel, we are all too prone to see evil as an accident happening in the complicated machine of the universe; we interpret it as a cog missing in a complex wheel, and put the blame on the maker of the universe for having failed to engineer it properly. On the other hand, we look for a solution to this problem, and the most threatening solution man has come across so far is communism, for communism claims to be the one, final solution to all human problems. Communism claims to have discovered that the cog missing is an adequate understanding of the sphere of economics. Once wealth becomes the exclusive possession of the state, all human difficulties will be solved, for everyone will receive according to his productivity and his needs. The problem is solved, and the results are well-organized concentration camps.

In fact, evil is not a problem, but much rather a mystery in which I myself am personally involved; for it is useless to fight evil in the world, be it injustice or wickedness, if I fail to discover the roots of the same disease in my own soul. We must, however, add to this distinction of Gabriel Marcel the observation that the term mystery can apply to very different things.

There are different kinds of mysteries

First, there is mystery in the religious sense; this is what surpasses the rational sphere as such, namely, the suprarational which we can only embrace in faith. Examples of this type of mystery are the Holy Trinity or the transubstantiation in the Eucharist.

Second, there are rational antinomies which we cannot solve with our reason, such as the coexistence of evil with the infinite goodness of God. They are not suprarational, but remain enigmatic for our reason, at least during our earthly existence.

Third, there are things which I cannot solve practically, things which are not to be changed by any plan, by any human effort, such as evil on this earth. Here the attempt to solve them with human regulations leads to making them worse, as we just saw in the case of communism, or any terrestrial messianism.

Fourth, we can call a "mystery" something which, because of its depth and richness, is inaccessible to a purely rational penetration in a geometrical fashion. In this sense the human person is a mystery; love is a mystery; beauty is a mystery. Although they are not suprarational, although they in no way contain antinomies, these mysteries escape the kind of rational explanation which is to be found in logic or mathematics. They also are so deep that we can never exhaust them with our knowledge.

We must approach other persons as mysteries

In this sense, communion with other persons is a mystery. It is this latter sense of mystery versus problems which applies to our specific context. Marcel tells us that philosophical mysteries cannot be solved, but we can shed light upon them.

Now, we are often tempted to see other persons as problems, and as we must live with them, we are eager to get some "tips" on how to deal with them. For example, we hear that a person with whom we will have to work has a very high idea of himself and of his accomplishments. We immediately infer that in order "to get on his good side" we shall have to pay him compliments.

Now, it is not illegitimate to try to get on someone's good side, but it does become illegitimate the moment we reduce the other person to the level of a puzzle, without any reverence for his own true self; it becomes illegitimate when we view him as a complex machine whose secret code we must discover. Once we discover it, we can work it at will and elicit any reaction that we please.

It is not difficult to see that this attitude is fearfully irreverent and does not imply the slightest trace of respect for the other person's individuality.Isolation may be self-inflictedIt is, however, also possible that one is fully responsible for his own isolation from others. If I make myself the absolute center of the universe, view everything and everyone exclusively from the point of view of the possible advantage or disadvantage that they can bring me, I lock myself up in myself, and should not marvel if I find myself in total isolation.

In his Divine Comedy Dante distinguished between the two forms of isolation we have just mentioned. In Hell, which is the homeland of isolation, the heretics suffer from absolute loneliness, each one of them buried in the tomb of his own errors; whereas another type of punishment consists in togetherness without any love, where the very presence of another person who hates you adds to your sufferings.

Fusion is an insuperable obstacle to communionFinally, we can speak of a type of solitude created by radical nondualism. This latter position is typical of some Oriental doctrines which claim that in fact everything is one; it is only cosmic illusion to believe that there is multiplicity. Ultimately, all things will return to the one unchanging metaphysical principle which is the only true reality. It might be argued that this attitude flows from an ardent, if unconscious, desire to reach communion. Be that as it may, absolute metaphysical fusion does not conquer communion, but actually makes it impossible. For a part is not and cannot be in communion with the whole; it is absorbed by it.

Self-centered mediocrity is an obstacle to communion

Let us now turn to a closer analysis of the obstacles which must be overcome for communion to be established between two persons. Once again let us borrow a key idea from Gabriel Marcel. He tells us in various works that each man has the tendency to remain imprisoned in the narrow circle of his self-interest and his own petty selfishness. This constitutes what he calls the moi, which can be compared to a closed monad "without windows," to quote Leibniz. But, Gabriel Marcel, tells us, man has other possibilities; he can also break free from the self-centeredness of his own egotism, and open up simultaneously to a different dimension of his own being. This is the discovery of the I in myself which faces a thou, that is, another person with whom I am in communion.

The birth of the I in myself implies a glorious victory over my own narrowness and selfishness. This victory is preceded by a battle, and it is precisely this battle against one's selfishness which many people are not willing to undertake. This is why many men prefer the comfortable nest of their own selfishness to the adventure of breaking open the doors of their self in order to meet another.

Men might reason, moreover, that every communion implies a risk and that by accepting it, we also open the door to sufferings, disillusions, and possible bitterness. Is it not safer, more reasonable to remain peacefully imprisoned in oneself? The love of mediocrity, so deeply rooted in man's nature, usually puts on the garments of reasonableness: "What can we hope to reach? Men cannot truly find one another. I do not wish to expose myself to bitterness and disillusion. I do no one any harm by remaining within myself.

The higher something ranks, the greater is the risk which it implies. The great gift of freedom of will implies the risk of sin. But without this risk, moral values would not be possible. Moral goodness ranks so high in God's eyes that He did not shun the risk included in freedom.

Granted, risks taken because of sheer boldness, even though no high values are at stake, are an outgrowth of self-assurance. These risks should not be taken. But to shun a high good, a great gift of God, only because a risk may be connected with it is completely erroneous.

We must remain open to communion

Communion is a gift and no effort on my part can ever achieve it; but I should be ready, "open," as Gabriel Marcel puts it. That is, I should have the inner readiness to accept communion if it should be offered to me. If I decide, in principle, that I shall refuse whatever gift will be granted me, I make a final option for my own mediocrity and finitude. I settle down in the stifling narrowness of my selfishness and reject the offer given me to enter a world in which, while losing my moi, I conquer myself.

It is noteworthy to remark that man is so very much made for communion that when he fails to attain it with other human beings, he tries to reach it with animals. Numerous cases could be cited of people who give all their affection to animals. This "love" is usually linked to a marked misanthropy. I recall an elderly woman who lived in our neighborhood for many years, and whose affection for her dog made her the center of our neighborhood's interest. She used to talk to it all the time, saying things such as "You, at least, won't abandon me; you'll remain faithful to me." Granted that a dog's faithfulness is something remarkable, granted that a dog will never abandon or betray you, we should never forget that the faithfulness of a dog can never be more than a dog's faithfulness.

Not long ago, while browsing through Ring of Bright Water, I came upon a passage in which the author tells us that when his otter died, he missed him more than he would have missed most of the people he knew, for he said "no one has trusted me as totally as my otter had." There is an element of tragedy hidden under these words.

Human communion implies a risk because it is based upon freedom and because we can never be given a mathematical exterior guarantee that it will not lead to disillusions. But as we saw, all great things in life imply a risk: the creation of works of art, birth, life, friendship, marriage.

Functionalism threatens communion

Another reason, I believe, why communion so often fails to be reached in our society is due to the importance granted to our work, our function in society. My students tell me that, from their early youth on, the whole accent of education is put on the question: What will you do to earn a living? Little is said (if anything at all) about what one will be as a person. Little by little, we accustom ourselves to seeing ourselves as nurse, as secretary, as teacher, and so forth, and this vision colors strongly the formation of our personality. There used to be such a thing as a typical telephone operator; she possessed a remarkably empty politeness. Her "I am sorry" when she gave you the wrong connection was impeccably correct and remarkably unremorseful. She seemed to be playing a social role, and this social role seemed to have so marked her personality that if ever she got married and burned the dinner, her "I am sorry" spoken to her husband might well have had the very same tone that she had while answering the phone.

The other day someone called me on the phone, and just her way of greeting revealed the nature of her errand: she was heading a hospital fundraising drive and asked me to head the drive in our house. It struck me as tragic that someone should become such a "hospital drive" type that she could be identified by her very function.

This functionalism, if we may call it so, is a grave threat to interpersonal relationships because it actually prevents a person from discovering himself and knowing who he is. Kierkegaard was aware of this danger, and reminds us eloquently that a man should be a man before he is, let us say, a professor.

Being is more important than doing

Our society is severely endangered by this impersonalism. In order to fight it, we should become aware of the threat it constitutes in our own personal life. We must also realize that we should respect ourselves, God's image in our souls. In our society so much emphasis is placed upon a person's accomplishments that we are finally led to overlook completely what a person is.

What I have in mind is typified in the well-known phrase "He is a self-made man," a phrase which incites us to look up to the person whose performances are so remarkable that in fact he has succeeded in doing something that cannot be done: namely, to make himself.

Inferiority complexes arise mostly because we make an unhealthy comparison between the accomplishments of another person and ourselves. But how little attention is paid to the other person's being, his kindness, generosity, humility, patience? The less we respect ourselves as persons made in God's image, the more we shall be led to identifying ourselves with our social role, our job, our accomplishments, real or imaginary. We are led to believe that success in life lies primarily in our ability to bring credentials, and yet who would dream of saying to another person "I love you because you are the most efficient secretary I have met in my life" or "because you are the teacher who best organizes his material"? Love is not concerned with a person's accomplishments; it is a response to a person's being.

This is why a typical word of love is to say "I love you, because you are as you are." God loved us prior to our doing anything, and this very love makes man lovable. This lovableness, which is ours without our meriting it, is something which we must accept with humility and which in fact constitutes the indispensable basis for further accomplishments.

God's love is a basis for communion with others

Now we come to the most important part of our topic. The basic antithesis to all torments created by solitude is shelteredness in the love of God, in communion with Christ. But apart from this, our trust in God's love is also the basis of any true communion with other human persons. We shall come back to the fundamental role of shelteredness in God's love for true communion with human persons later on. Here we need only stress its influence on the human fear of taking risks. Few are those whose life is based upon this shelteredness in God's love, and as a result, people fear an encounter with another person who might reject them.

Communion is different from social acceptance

This leads to another idea whose role in our society can hardly be overestimated: the idea that the most important thing in our relationship to other people is to be socially accepted. Granting that to be in communion with other persons is of central value and importance in human life, we must beware of confusing this deep human experience with conviviality, with a harmless, superficial being together which, in the best of cases, creates the illusion of communion but is in fact separated from it by an abyss. The stress put in our society on this superficial togetherness is such that a child who has no television in his home feels ashamed and excluded from those who do and with whom he cannot share television fads.

How often can we say that the price to be paid for being accepted is to make serious compromises such as lowering one's moral standards or giving up centrally important ideas which are officially labeled as "old-fashioned" or "sissy"? Quite apart from the compromises which a person might have to make in order to be accepted, the important point is that the person whose whole ideal is to be accepted puts on "garments" which are not his own and which will probably lead to a total betrayal of his own true self, of his own true personality and inner calling. The ludicrous side of this regrettable tendency lies in the fact that actually it is a small, dynamic minority which enforces its views on a gullible and weak majority, who believe themselves to be "convinced," while in fact they have only yielded.

It is easy to see that such an attitude of shallow conformism actually destroys the basis for any real communion between human beings and nourishes a life so artificial, so alien to the deep roots of the self, that the seeds of a possible communion will wither and die before they are given a chance to blossom.

Dullness of spirit is a perennial threat to communion

Enough has been said about the difficulties of attaining communion with another human person. Let us now examine the obstacles lying in the way of those who have been granted a real communion with another. We should not limit to physical phenomena the power exercised by the law of gravity; it also applies to our spiritual life. We grow wings (to quote Plato) when we fall in love and are granted a profound contact with another person! It is as if we see the world with new eyes, as if we have awakened from a slumber to a full awareness. And yet, after a while, we seem to get used to the incredible gift granted to us, the gift of starting to live truly (to quote Gabriel Marcel) instead of just vegetating. After a while, we become more engrossed in what is so erroneously called real life; everyday preoccupations wrap us up more and more, and little by little, we fall back into our old self, into our moi. Whether we recall Shakespeare's lines "Men are April when they woo; December when they wed" or think of the parable of theSower or they all point to the same thing: the danger of falling back to sleep, the danger of taking things for granted, and of forgetting that to receive a great gift implies the responsibility of caring for it, of sheltering it, and protecting its growth and development. This danger is all the more serious because people do not realize how dangerous it is. They reason that the time of romance must come to an end: the honeymoon cannot last forever; now it is time to go back to serious life. Love is more serious than work.

This may be the most ominous mark characterizing our epoch: namely, the tendency to see love, marriage, and friendship as relaxations from work, which is seen as the more serious part of life. Alas, we are far from remembering that work was meant to be a punishment, inflicted upon Adam after Original Sin. Apart from our relation to God, marriage and friendship should be at the very center of our lives. Work is a necessity, a duty, but something whose importance cannot be compared to the value of family life. It is a very serious perversion to view professional work as the serious part of life and family life as a relaxation. No, the time I spend with my loved ones is not the time to relax and take it easy, but rather the moment to put on my festival garment, the moment to accomplish a real lifting up of my heart. It is the moment to realize that my love for another person is, humanly speaking, the precious pearl of my life, and that I must prepare myself for every encounter with my beloved with the same grateful recollection I experienced at the moment of first falling in love. To quote Keats again: "Love is no plaything." It is a remnant from earthly paradise and it must be treated accordingly.

We should oppose the trend so prevalent in the modern world which allows family life to recede more and more into the background, until we can say there is no more family and no more life.

The same spiritual laziness can manifest itself in another direction. Marriage creates a unity between the two partners which is a unity of souls, but also a unity of life. But we have seen that the type of unity proper to communion presupposes that the two partners remain independent persons. Now when dulled by habit, life in common can lead to a false identification of the two persons. Gabriel Marcel has shed light upon the nature of this subtle danger in one of his plays called Other People's Hearts. The theme is a marriage certainly based upon love, but one in which the husband more and more considers his wife as part of himself. He no longer considers it necessary to discuss plans with her or inquire into her wishes, because, as he puts it, he feels he can take for granted that they are identical to his. She feels that she is being treated as a thing, not as a person, and suffers deeply from this lack of reverence on her husband's part.

This danger is so subtle that instead of being viewed as a threat to communion, it is rather interpreted as an expression of the unshakeable union which exists between husband and wife.

To use Marcel's terminology, instead of having a real we communion (which implies the I and the Thou), all that is left is an inflated ego, in this case that of the husband. He treats his wife as a possession, as a thing; he no longer treats her as a person.

Disillusionment is a threat to communion

The greatest threat concerning communion is to be found in failures of the loved one. Falling in love is essentially to be granted a vision of the beauty of another person's individuality. This vision fills us with reverence and simultaneously with a powerful attraction for the object whose beauty has been perceived. Literally, to love another person means to see his beauty, to discover the secret of his personality. This vision as we have called it, is so convincing that we say, "I shall never forget it.”

Unfortunately, everyday life puts its dust on everything. The shortcomings, mistakes, and imperfections of the loved one come to the fore, and often blur my perception of his beauty. The great temptation is to say then: "Love has made me blind. I projected so many perfections into my loved one, but now that I have a second look at him, I see clearly that much of what I attributed to him is sheer illusion.

Pride blinds us to the faults of our beloved

The idea that love is blind is almost as old as philosophy, for we already find it propounded in Plato's Symposium by one of the guests of the banquet. Granted that it is quite possible for a person to be totally blind to the faults of a beloved person, the question is whether it is love that blinds him.

We say of a mother who obstinately refuses to see the faults of her child that "she is blinded by love." That the mother is blinded is clear, but that it is love which is responsible for her blindness is quite another matter. Is it not more correct to say that it is pride which blinds her to her child's mistakes? It is as if the mother said to herself, "My child cannot have these faults, because she is my child; how should my child be able to do such a thing?"

We see clearly that this mother views her child as does someone with an inflated ego, and for this reason: it is unbearable for her to see and admit the child's mistakes. Far from being love which blinds her, it is rather the very imperfection of her love that allows her pride to take over. It is as if this mother said to herself, "If truly my child possesses these faults and shortcomings, then I shall no longer love her.”

Love sees the beloved clearly

True love, on the contrary, sees with illuminating clearness the image of the loved one, what he is called upon to be, what he is in God's eyes; and simultaneously, against the background of this vision of beauty, the lover sees that his beloved is still far from realizing it. The loved one is in statu viae, on the way to becoming it; he has not yet fulfilled himself.It should now be clear that true love pitilessly sees the faults and shortcomings of the loved one, but interprets these faults differently. At this point, I must refer to a feature of love elaborated by Dietrich von Hildebrand.

Love sees what the beloved is meant to be

Indeed, a fundamental characteristic of love is that all the good qualities of the beloved are considered to be a valid expression of his true self, whereas his faults are interpreted as an unfaithfulness toward his true self. To say "this is not his true self," when the beloved commits some fault, is a typical word of love.

Whereas we usually consider the values and the disvalues in a person to be equally characteristic of him, to belong equally to his self, it is typical of love, which implies a response to the beauty of this individual person, to consider all the disvalues as noncharacteristic of him, as an unfaithfulness toward his true self, a failure truly to be himself.

This distinguishes all kinds of love from a neutral, so-called "objective" attitude toward other persons. The psychologist called as an expert in court will balance or weigh with one another positive and negative qualities of the defendant. The lover, on the contrary, will consider the positive as the expression of his real, authentic self, and the negative as betrayal of his true self, a denial, a falling away from it.

This is the credit which love and love alone gives to the beloved. This credit is also a specific mark of love of neighbor. Here love responds to the ontological value of the person, to his character as an image of God, seeing him in the light of the similitudo Dei, that is, the sanctification which he is called upon to attain. Every fault is thus seen as a betrayal of his character as an image of God, an infidelity, an apostasy from his true self.

Thus love does not overlook the faults of the beloved and is in no way blind toward them; but the lover approaches them in a completely different way. It must be emphasized that the approach of love is in reality much more objective, much more true, than the one of the neutral observer. It is not only more objective, but is even the only objective and adequate approach, because it alone is true to the nature of the person. This credit is a great gift which the lover bestows on the beloved. It implies an element of hope which is an incredible comfort and help for the beloved.

Love has faith in the goodness of the beloved

Yet that is not the only credit granted by love. Love also interprets everything in the best light, as long as it does not reveal itself as definitely negative. There are so many things in man which can be interpreted in very different ways, so many deeds, attitudes, and sayings which are in themselves neither morally good nor evil, neither beautiful nor ugly, but which gain their meaning and characteristic only when seen against the background of this special individual person. Whereas it is a typical mark of malevolence and hatred to be on the lookout for the other person's mistakes, and consequently to interpret everything in him in the worst possible light, it is a basic element of love that one has the readiness to interpret everything in the best possible light, as long as it is not univocally negative. This credit implies an element of believing in the other person.

It may precisely be this faith which will give the loved one the courage to fight against his own frailties. As a matter of fact, we believe that certain persons never muster the strength to fight their mistakes because they have never met anyone willing to believe in them. Faith is an essential element of love, and he who stops loving because the true image of his beloved is momentarily covered up, did not truly love in the first place.

Hope is an essential element in love

Because love is essentially related to faith, it is also intimately linked to hope, the hope that the one I love will one day become what I know he is called upon to be. Hope is patient. Whereas the impatient man sets deadlines and, when they are not met, falls into revolt and despair, the true lover gets impatient precisely because his hope is so much alive that he trusts that what is not accomplished today can and will take place tomorrow.

Love is so much linked to hope that it will never force another person into becoming what I know he should become, but it will patiently and reverently accept the rhythm of development proper to another person, while trusting all the time that he will come to be what I know he should be.

Charity must permeate every love

We now see that the three supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and love also give us a key to an understanding of natural human love. This confirms a basic Platonic principle: namely, we can only discover the true meaning of the world in which we live if we keep our eyes fixed above this world. Yet we must go even further. All natural categories of love (such as parental or filial love, friendship or spousal love) can fully reach what their love aspires to only when they are transformed by Christ. It is only when the spirit of charity permeates the respective category of love with its glorious breath of sublime goodness and heroic self-donation that love can be true to its own essence.

This transformation in no way erases the specific character of each type of love. On the contrary, all the typical features of the respective category of love will be more perfectly unfolded when this transformation has taken place. Pope Pius XII stated this beautifully when he said that "God with His love neither destroys nor changes nature, but perfects it." Clearly, there is only one solution to solitude — the scourge of our times — and this solution is Christ.