SIXTH UNIT
The last step of this itinerary is that of discovering love as a personal vocation, as the answer to a call.
The youth will come to recognize love as a path with different stages, and to know that there is no rush in reaching the finish line. What is important is to arrive there without skipping over any part of the path, and to recognize when love is true.
Love, which is personal, is made concrete in marriage, and for this reason courtship is a bridge on the path of love toward the mutual donation of oneself in marriage. Priesthood and the consecrated life are also a personal response to this first love.
• The need to learn to love. The fundamental human vocation to love.
• The discovery of a prior love: creatures of God, who is love, who loves, who creates out of love, who calls his creatures to love.
• The paths that lead to true love: loving oneself; the family, school of love; the loving encounter with God.
• Two ways of self-donation: virginity and marriage.
• The specific nature of friendship, attraction, falling in love and true love. Knowing how to differentiate and recognize them.
• Courtship: its meaning and finality. Chastity in courtship. Analysis of premarital relations.
• The nature proper to the conjugal union: personal act, entails the action of two people who act in a motivational and intentional reciprocity, colored by a unique reciprocal pleasure.
• The two significances of the conjugal act: unitive and procreative.
• Marriage: conjugal love is a committed love. Marriage as a vocation to love and as a sacrament.
• Unity in body and soul.
• The bonding of the corporeal dimension and the affective dimension in sexual expressions.
WORKING MATERIAL