Nor boyfriend, let’s be clear on that
Puebla, about fifteen years ago (around 2010).
A good friend told me part of a conversation she had had a few days earlier with one of her six-year-old nephews.
The nephew started telling her about a classmate’s girlfriend, about the same age as him.
My friend tries to correct him:
-She will not be his girlfriend, but a friend.
The nephew insists:
-No, aunt, it’s his girlfriend.
He remains silent for two or three seconds and adds:
-But don’t worry, I don’t have a girlfriend.
He thinks for another few moments and concludes:
-No boyfriend either, hey!
At the age of six, about fifteen years ago, her nephew assured her that he had no girlfriend or boyfriend.
Love and sexuality
At the conclusion of the anecdote, my friend asked me:
-Tomás, could it be that we talk to our children too much about sex?
I answered that our children and nieces and nephews, from a very early age, know a lot of things about sex that we don’t know.
And I added that most probably the only thing they do not know, because no one has told them, is what really and decisively matters:
● That sexuality is a wonderful means in the service of love.
They probably ignore the only important thing: the intimate relationship between sexuality and love.
Only three were correct. After some thought, my friend confirmed my opinion with another anecdote.
A few months earlier, in a “well-educated” school, some 300 students between the ages of 13 and 16 were given a kind of survey.
One of the items asked them to relate “sex” to one of the six options offered, which included the word “love”.
Only three students made the connection between love and sex!
Among 300 “well-educated” 13- to 16-year-olds, only three associated sexuality with love.
Sex… and love?
We commented that this should not be surprising.
The messages that our society declares publicly about sexuality do not usually put it in relation to love: neither those that we “receive” without looking for them in the street, nor those given to us by the media, nor those that populate the Internet, that “sneak in” – even unintentionally – into our cell phone…
Our “culture” offers sex, including in non-pornographic environments, as a fundamental means of obtaining pleasure, as emotional satisfaction… or in a thousand other ways, sometimes very degrading, that we are all more or less familiar with.
Contemporary culture tends to link sexuality to pleasure, emotional satisfaction or other realities that, in fact, have little to do with love.
Participation in love and in the creative power of God
In the midst of all this misleading rumor, I consider it convenient to remind our readers what sexuality is in the background, highlighting this “is” with all the vigor and the rotundity that make possible my condition as a metaphysician.
If we overcome deceptive appearances and go to its innermost core, we will discover that sexuality is, first and foremost, a stupendous participation in the infinite Love and creative Power of God.
In that order, from our point of view:
● in His infinite Love;
● and in His creative Power.
Human sexuality constitutes a marvelous participation in the Love and creative power of God.
A marvelous ingredient of human love
Simultaneously, again in the background, sexuality is a great means to awaken, develop, consolidate, make grow, mature, rectify… the love between a man and a woman, precisely as such (male and female: sexed persons).
The verbs have been chosen with a certain arbitrariness. They could be replaced by other equivalent ones and many others could be added.
What should always be clear is that sexuality is “thought of” as an ineffable means to germinate, consolidate and strengthen the love between man and woman. Sexuality is a marvelous means at the service of sexual-sexual human love.
… and 3. It may be the former because it is the latter
This is perhaps the most relevant idea that I intend to communicate.
Human sexuality can be a participation in the infinite and creative Love of God (it is called to be) because it is capable of bringing forth, maintaining and increasing a current of exquisite love between a male and a female (it is called to do so).
The text and the context should “match”.
● The text with which the entry into this world of any human person is “written” is God’s infinite Love that “pours” over it and grants it a being called to endure for
all eternity as an interlocutor of divine Love.
● The context cannot but be a marvelous act of love, in which the male and female give themselves and receive fully all their capacity to love as sexed persons.
Sexuality constitutes a participation in the infinite Love and in the creative power of God “because” it is capable of establishing, consolidating and growing a wonderful relationship of love between one male and one female.