{"id":34956,"date":"2024-11-25T11:41:01","date_gmt":"2024-11-25T09:41:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fondazionefratellitutti.org\/?post_type=articles&p=34956"},"modified":"2025-01-22T12:43:45","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T10:43:45","slug":"the-speech-by-h-e-card-mauro-gambetti-at-the-lectio-petri-of-11-19-24-at-corinth-eros-and-agape","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/www.fondazionefratellitutti.org\/en\/articles\/the-speech-by-h-e-card-mauro-gambetti-at-the-lectio-petri-of-11-19-24-at-corinth-eros-and-agape\/","title":{"rendered":"The speech by H.E. Card. Mauro Gambetti at the Lectio Petri of 11\/19\/24, \u201cAt Corinth: Eros and Agape\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

VATICAN, NOV 19 – Below is the speech by H.E. Card. Mauro Gambetti<\/strong>, Archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica, president of the Fabbrica di San Pietro and the Fratelli tutti Foundation at the Nov. 19 Lectio Petri<\/strong> \u201cAt Corinth: Eros and Agape\u201d.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Which do you prefer? To love someone who does not love you or to be loved by someone you do not love?<\/p>\n

This is not easy to answer. If we say, \u201cto love someone who does not love us,\u201d we join the ranks of the would-be heroes who expose themselves to the sadness of unlove to self and the anger that ingratitude provokes; and if we say, \u201cto be loved by someone we do not love,\u201d we affirm the value of our existence, which is in any case deserving of love, but also the selfishness that does not return the good received.<\/p>\n

Then again, this sort of oxymoron of love condenses the daily tension of our journey of human and spiritual growth, which began in childhood. The child is loved by someone who does not love: protected, cared for, fed, kissed by a mother who plunders, exploits, devours. Conversely, in the adult state, the mother loves someone who does not love her: she takes the initiative, gives herself, is patient with a child who can often be ungrateful to her.<\/p>\n

The binomial eros and agape<\/em> is situated in this dynamic horizon of love, in which – as Benedict XVI writes in number 7 of his splendid encyclical Deus caritas est<\/em> – \u201ceros and agape<\/em> – ascending love and descending love – never allow themselves to be completely separated from one another. The more both, though in different dimensions, find proper unity in the one reality of love, the more the true nature of love in general is realized.\u201d<\/p>\n

I offer some food for thought to delve into the theme of the evening.<\/p>\n

Eros<\/em> immediately refers back to desire. According to Greek myth, Eros<\/em> was conceived on the day of Aphrodite’s birth from the union of Penia (poverty) and Poros (wealth). Hence he encompasses in himself both dimensions: that of the one who feels satisfaction from the vital energy and indomitable drive to seek that inhabit him and that of the one who continually feels in himself the lack of beauty (Aphrodite) and thus of the good. In this sense, desiring is a powerful drive, to life and of life, which merges with the irrepressible need for relationship, indeed which becomes a relationship with a you-the prime signifier of existence-or with something.<\/p>\n

However, as Plato writes in the Symposium, \u201cby his nature [Eros<\/em>] is neither mortal nor immortal, but on the same day, sometimes he flourishes and lives when he succeeds in his contrivances, sometimes he dies, but then comes back to life because of his father’s nature. And what he procures quickly gets out of his hands, so that Eros is never poor or rich […].\u201d<\/p>\n

Desiring is vital. Young people who defy history by following a ‘star’ and the elderly who still know how to dream because they feel the ‘lack of stars’ growing stronger; those who are madly in love and those who live a religious vocation leaning toward seeking the face of God know it; those who leave for a distant country facing the risk of death and those who live far from their loved ones know it. But longing can be lethal. This is known by all those who have thought to find ultimate answers to the deep restlessness of the heart in the conquest of an ‘object’ of desire: always, once achieved, only bitterness remains in the mouth. If one does not learn not to identify with one’s needs and the objects\/subjects that can satisfy them, they will dispose of me.<\/p>\n

Without education, desire can be deceptive and deadly. It is necessary to exercise freedom and discernment about the ends toward which to direct one’s existential tension. To do so, it is essential to pose a radical decision.<\/p>\n

I express it with an image. Desire places you in the middle of the ford of a navigable river, whose calm and placid waters flow into the ocean. The bank from which you have moved since childhood to cross the river of life is manned by your own needs; the opposite bank, which intrigues and attracts, is crowned with countless goods and gifts that are not your own. Only by stopping in the middle of the ford do you come to know the emptiness dug in your innermost self by lack, you can decide to hold back nothing to let the river of life flow in and out of you, and you can discover that desire expands until your heart joins the waters of love, in the open sea.<\/p>\n

It is a matter of faith. Dante, in the XXIV canto of Paradise, responds thus to St. Peter who asks him to manifest the substance and origin of his faith: \u201cAnd I answer, I believe in one God alone and eternal, who all ‘l ciel move, non moto, con amore e con disio\u201d (130-132).<\/p>\n

According to one of the interpretations of this triplet, God always creates and sustains the world with love, and his love is matched by the cooperating force of desire that he arouses in created beings and particularly in humans. The encounter between these two motions spreads fragrances of perfume, illuminates with beauty, and fills with bliss.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the word desire speaks of the stars (from Latin: de-sideribus), from which we come or are simply removed (de, a particle that can indicate origin or express motion from place). Dante recalls them at the conclusion of each cantica: coming out of hell those lights are barely glimpsed, very distant, yet capable of instilling hope and animating the desire to see them again (cf. Inf. XXXIV 139); at the summit of purgatory they have already become a sure destination and their nearness disposes one to climb to reach them (cf. Purg. XXXIII 145); at the summit of heaven the poet is as if assimilated to them, made a partaker of their heavenly life and their very splendor. It is worth listening again to this last triplet of the Comedy: \u201cA l’alta fantasia qui manc\u00f2 possa \/ ma gi\u00e0 volgeva il mio disio e ‘l velle, \/ s\u00ec come rota ch’igualmente \u00e8 mossa, l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle\u201d (Par. XXXIII 145).<\/p>\n

I unite with the words of the Supreme Poet our wish that, as Pope Francis said in Candor Lucis, each person’s desire will lead to the final landing, to the truth, to the answer to the whys of existence, \u201cuntil, as St. Augustine already stated, the heart finds rest and peace in God.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":34924,"template":"","tags":[],"categories":[213,236,212,217],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe speech by H.E. Card. 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