Page 183 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 8

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Although sins against love do weaken a person’s condition, they do not
destroy his personal ability to love. We are born with this readiness to
love, we were created by God to be his image. This personal God is love,
and we develop ourselves as persons by intentional actions thanks to our
awareness and our freedom, our ability to love. Love which is experien-
ced in the atmosphere of awareness and freedom is a measure of human
greatness and dignity.

The love experienced by a person has various recipients. In love, the se-
quence is significant: first of all towards God, then towards oneself, then
towards one‘s spouse, after that towards the children and parents, then
towards further relatives, friends, acquaintances, strangers, enemies, fi-
nally towards our natural environment. A special form of the love relati-
onship is love towards oneself, which is expressed by paying attention to
all spheres of human life (somatic, mental, soulish). The greater the area
of reality that is loved, the more consciously we direct ourselves towards
it; the higher the level of responsibility taken for this beloved world, the
more complete a person’s experiences and their fulfilment.

For me, as a Catholic priest, the following has a particular importance
for my understanding of the love of a person: Communion, the church
service, the feast of love. We find its model when God is the guest of
Abraham; when the Passover Feast is celebrated by Jesus Christ with his
apostles; in the suffering and the resurrection of Jesus Christ; in the sup-
per with the disciples at Emmaus. In sharing Communion, beginning
with the Passover Feast held by Jesus with his apostles, the human being
and human love develop according to the pattern of the love of Jesus,
which reveals itself in his suffering, on the cross, in the resurrection. Eve-
ry church service is for me a Passover, God’s passing through my life, the
enriching of my life with God‘s love. In this context I very much like the
picture by Kathrin Feser: “Fraternal love feast”.

When I look at the pictures by Karl Vollmer (especially those on page
17), I see the essence of personal life and of love in the union at under-
standing and heart. In therapy, one often hears of the necessity of finding
a path between the heart and the brain. This is a symbolic expression
of the longing which appears in man in connection with the disruption
between feelings and thoughts. Proper, authentic, mature love is distin-
guished by the integration of feelings and thoughts, which takes place
most deeply in the reality of the conscience. The conscience is a guard of
love. It keeps watch to ensure that wisdom and kindness are united. It can
therefore be said that the conscience guards the condition of the human
person. The maturity of the human person is linked to the maturity of
the conscience. One expression of this maturity is love, which God gives
to man so that the latter can multiply it, enrich it and live it to the full.

Stephen Greggo emphasises the truth of the holiness of the person and
the fact that the human being was made as God‘s image. He describes
counselling and psychotherapy as an interpersonal dialogue, as a theo-
drama sui generis. These remarks are very important and deep in their

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