{"id":16183,"date":"2026-01-23T10:05:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T09:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/?p=16183"},"modified":"2026-01-30T17:40:43","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T16:40:43","slug":"learning-about-beautiful-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/learning-about-beautiful-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning about \u201cbeautiful love\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ruffini\"<\/picture>
Marco Ruffini leads a meeting on the theme of affectivity.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

Four years ago, I returned to Bovisa, a neighborhood on the northern outskirts of Milan. Here, at the Polytechnical University, I had spent hours and hours in my university career as an apprentice architect. And here today I am the chaplain. After the pandemic, the space designated for a chapel was transformed into a study room. I am, therefore, a chaplain without a chapel: I have access to two offices but I celebrate Mass during the lunch break in the rooms that the University makes available from time to time. Much rides therefore on relationships and on the \u201cvisibility\u201d that my tenure on the two Campuses is able to have. It is about picking up on the needs expressed and not expressed by the young people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This past year, my energy went above all into preparing and guiding a series of meetings on education to affection and sexuality that I called The Jeweler\u2019s Shop<\/em>, borrowing the title of the theatrical work of Karol Wojtyla. I took an afternoon to paper over some spaces near the dispensers of coffee and soda with the flyers, which held the details of the initiative over the background of two wedding rings. And the short phrase: \u201cA laboratory to learn the vocabulary of love.\u201d I know that in the Mechanical Engineering, two young men commented, after having taken a bit of a distracted look at the flyer: \u201cIt must be a metalworking laboratory.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the beginning of the year, I collected dozens of questions from the students, which I used as a starting point to design a six-month course. Here are some of them, all of which are interesting: \u201cWhat is the origin of the Church’s position on affectivity and sexuality? Isn’t loving each other physically a form of good?; \u201dWhat does virginity really mean?\u201c; \u201dWhat does it mean to keep each other company while in a long-distance relationship?”; \u201cHow can we have the patience and freedom to accept an answer that may not be what we expected?\u201d; \u201cWhat is the point of loving and giving ourselves to another, sexually and emotionally, if it risks hurting so much?\u201d; \u201cMarriage scares me because it is inevitable that love will end\u201d; \u201cWith some of my friends, I struggle to understand the affection I feel for them. Why does thinking about certain faces warm my heart so much? What is the line between caring and loving?\u201d; \u201cHow is it possible to walk together when you have different views on sexuality? And who can you trust so that you don’t have to live the relationship alone?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The task of two Christian fianc\u00e9s is to always begin again.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The course sought to address these and other questions: education in love as part of one’s personal educational journey; the transition from falling in love to love; the promise of engagement and the testing of the relationship; a summary of John Paul II’s theology of the body; the sexual act and the Church’s teaching on premarital relationships; marital chastity and virginity in the charism of Fr. Giussani. Each lesson was punctuated by videos, details of works of art, pages from novels, and testimonies from friends. We drew content from texts by Scola, Caffarra, and other disciples of the Polish pope. Despite the complexity and sensitivity of the topics, participation was numerous and very attentive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of them shared their reactions with me at the end. Two in particular struck me: \u201cBut how can you not want for something so good to be opened up to the world, to generate more, to deepen more and more together?\u201d \u201cI was fascinated and inspired by the immense capacity for love that dwells in my heart. This happened especially when you said at the end: \u2018The task of two Christian fianc\u00e9s is to always begin again.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will conclude with a quote from St. John Paul II, which explains well why I hope to repeat the experience in the next academic year: \u201dLove is not something that can be learned, and yet there is nothing that is so necessary to learn! […] If you love human love, there is also a keen need to commit all your energies to \u2018beautiful love\u2019. Because love is beautiful.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Can one really speak to young people about affectivity and sexuality? At the Polytechnical University of Milan, a full lecture hall tells us yes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16678,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"slim_seo":{"title":"Learning about \u201cbeautiful love\u201d - Fraternity of St. Charles","description":"Can one really speak to young people about affectivity and sexuality? At the Polytechnical University of Milan, a full lecture hall tells us yes."},"footnotes":""},"categories":[378],"tags":[871,522,473,769],"writers":[241],"regions":[385],"cities":[427],"class_list":["post-16183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-testimonies","tag-affettivita-en","tag-educazione-en","tag-missione-en","tag-universita-en","writers-marco-ruffini","regions-italy","cities-milan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16183"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16184,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16183\/revisions\/16184"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16183"},{"taxonomy":"writers","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writers?post=16183"},{"taxonomy":"regions","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/regions?post=16183"},{"taxonomy":"cities","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cities?post=16183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}