Monday, December 26, 2016

Amoris Laetitia - Par. 148



148.  Training in the areas of emotion and instinct is necessary, and at times this requires setting limits.  Excess, lack of control or obsession with a single form of pleasure can end up weakening and tainting that very pleasure144 and damaging family life.  A person can certainly channel his passions in a beautiful and healthy way, increasingly pointing them towards altruism and an integrated self-fulfillment that can only enrich interpersonal relationships in the heart of the family.  This does not mean renouncing moments of intense enjoyment,145 but rather integrating them with other moments of generous commitment, patient hope, inevitable weariness and struggle to achieve an ideal.  Family life is all this, and it deserves to be lived to the fullest.

144 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 32, art.7.
145 Cf. Id., Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 153, art. 2, ad 2: "Abundantia delectationis quae est in actu venero secundum rationem ordinato, non contrariatur medio virtutis".

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