Hymn to love, the La Croix file

” We talk about love for the motherland, love for one’s profession, love between friends, love for work, love between parents and children, between brothers and between relatives, love for neighbor and love for God », Notes Pope Benedict XVI in the first lines of his encyclical Deus caritas is published in 2005. We still talk about love of life, art, nature, animals, good things… This abundance can give the feeling of a hackneyed word. But we can also interpret it as pointing this movement of the human being towards realities which are external to him, which attract him, captivate him, mobilize him, stimulate him … A powerful movement, which cannot be explained, which can produce the best, but also the worst … There are intrusive, badly directed, disorderly loves that isolate instead of pushing to go out and surpass oneself.

“Made for love, we have within each of us a law of“ ecstasy ”: to go out of ourselves to find in others an increase in being. This is why man must in any case carry out this enterprise: to come out of himself “, writes Pope Francis in Fratelli tutti (n ° 88). It is on this exit movement that The cross wanted to deepen, even as we live in a world tempted by withdrawal into oneself. For two weeks, we will explore the different dimensions of love, from its expression in the marriage and family to its social and political expression, without forgetting its artistic fruitfulness. To testify that “Love is the most universal, the most formidable and the most mysterious of cosmic energies”, in the words of the Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, one of the great thinkers of the XX^e century.

→ CHRONICLE. A not-so-simple little explanation of love

► “We can make love last”

Interview with Alexis Jenni : The writer and columnist for The cross goes out at Gallimard Beauty always lasts who will speak … of love

► Love yourself

Analysis: Shouldn’t we first seek to love ourselves?

Lighting : The risk of narcissism in the era of “likes” and “followers”

Tuesday June 1

► Is true love the one that lasts?

Analysis : Love is forever?

Lighting : Love, how do you stay yourself?

♦ Video – Love in the digital age: Is Netflix killing the couple? Interview with Aurore Malet-Karas, doctor in neuroscience and sexologist

Wednesday June 2

► “Eros”, “philia”, “agape”, what love are we talking about?

Analysis: Love your neighbor as yourself?

Testimony : Loving your enemy, what does that mean?

♦ Video – Love in the digital age: Romantic comedies, a biased view of love? Interview with Pierre-Olivier Toulza, lecturer in film studies

Thursday June 3

► Love, can that be explained?

Analysis: Love in the Age of Algorithms and Social Media

Lighting : The love of God, this great mystery

Spirituality notebook: Understand The Hymn to Love

♦ Video – Love in the digital age: Love under algorithms. Interview with Marie Bergström, Swedish sociologist, researcher in couple sociology and specialist in dating applications

Friday June 4