Feb 24 Tue
Is love blind?
Love is not blind: it is profoundly clairvoyant.
Far from being blind, love makes one see, and be perceptive and discover the current inner richness of the beloved.
I’m talking about authentic, genuine love; not mere passion, whim, or a more or less disguised egocentrism.
Real, well-tested love, far from clouding the vision of the person who loves, makes it more penetrating and astute, more subtle, and understanding.
When you love, nature ceases to be an enigma.
We perceive in them all that they have been, all that they could have been, all that they are now, and all that they can be in the future.
Those around them only see them from the outside but spouses, to take the most frequent example, love each other with genuine madness, and this going out of themselves to enter into the beloved, makes them shrewd, understanding, and intuitive.
The same is true of mothers. Each one delights in praising her beloved son as her life, her everything, her love, her king, her heaven, while none of these nicknames seem appropriate for the neighbor’s child.
Only committed love allows one to perceive the intimate dignity and future fulfillment of the beloved.
Love is not blind; it is by no means blinded. Love is bound, and the more bound it is, the less blinded it is.
“The more bound…”: the reason for this truth is that, as the bonds that unite us to the loved one intensify, the identification becomes greater.
The one who loves becomes one with the beloved, transforms into the other, without losing one’s own uniqueness.
Love takes us out of ourselves and introduces us to the intimacy of the beloved.
To love, therefore, means to know in depth what the beloved is in the present and, progressively, to anticipate what they are destined to be, their future ideal, their fullness.
Unlike what happens with merely instinctive desires, which are directed towards anyone who can appease them, true love is always directed towards a specific person, not interchangeable with any other: Love has nothing to do with an anonymous partner in instinctive relationships.
We could say that loving means being able to say “you” to someone; and to say “yes” to them: to accept them in all that they are worth. To love is to see the other person as God intended.
Love not only welcomes the fellow human being in their human condition, but in their strict uniqueness and singularity: as a person, as a unique, unrepeatable ‘you’.
This is also how God, our Father, loves us: His Love is the Greatest Love. “You and I belong to Christ's family, for 'He himself has chosen us before the foundation of the world, to be saints, to be blameless in his sight, for love of him, having predestined us to be his adopted children through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his Will'. We have been chosen gratuitously by Our Lord. His choice of us sets us a clear goal.” Our goal must be personal sanctity.
With excerpts from Tomás Melendo.