Marriage . . . A Preview of Eternal Love
There is an old saying that love is blind. To which someone added the further note of wisdom that — if love is blind, then marriage must be an institution for the blind. Like many jokes, if it is funny, it is just because there is an element of truth contained in it. Which is another way of saying that while attention should be paid to the institution, it is also necessary to help the blind to see.
It is safe to say that, among other things, it takes two people to make a marriage. Among the necessary qualifications of these two people, it might be well if both were human beings, preferably the adult type. Other qualifications might be mentioned, but for purposes of our discussion let's limit ourselves to this question — Who are these human beings entering marriage and what do they expect from it?
To Love and Be Loved
If one were to take a poll of engaged couples as to what they hoped to achieve in marriage, you might get a whole litany of goals. A similar poll of experienced married couples might show a smaller and more realistic list. In either case, the litany could be summed up under two headings. Every couple in marriage wants (and has a right to want) two basic human needs satisfied — one is the need to love; the other is the need to be loved.
This is not something fanciful, romantic or unrealistic on their part. The need of loving and being loved flows from their very natures as human beings. If the marriage does not fulfill these two needs, it will be unhappy and eventually dissolved, unless held together by an acute sense of duty or by a type of virtue bordering on, if not actually, the heroic in nature.
Sociologists can draw up their nice statistical tables showing the particular percentage of material break-down due to such external pressures as in-laws, money, housing conditions, alcoholism and the like. Perhaps a 100% of all marital failures might be ascribed by some people to one or a combination of these external pressures.
Yet the fact of the matter is that all married couples at one time or another face one or many or even all of these external pressures. Why is it that in one case in-laws will break up a marriage and strengthen it in another? Why is it that in one case finances will be blamed for dissolution of a marriage and in another money (or the lack of it and the consequent necessity of sacrificing together) will be one of the strong bonds between a couple?
It might be suggested that in many cases the marital failure occurred because, first, that marriage was not satisfying the couple's basic human needs of loving and being loved. When the external pressure was applied, the marriage, lacking internal strength, collapsed like a wooden table whose legs had been eaten away by termites. In the case of the successful marriage, the presence of this outside pressure was just another occasion or impetus to one loving the other better and more perfectly and being loved more completely in return.
To state the proposition that much unhappiness in marriage can be traced to the failure on the part of couples to fulfill their basic needs of loving and being loved is not to offer just another plausible theory for marital break-down. This proposition is based on certain theological facts of life.
One of the first things learned in catechism is the answer to the question — What is man? What is a human being? A human being is defined there as a "creature (composed of body and soul) and made to the Image and Likeness of God." Two elements here might be emphasized. One, that a human being is a creature and, two, that he is made to the Image and Likeness of God.
By being a human creature is simply meant that he is the product of the gifts of love of other persons — first, of God Who through His gift of love gives him life and then the gift of love of the parents who cooperate with God in the gift of life. The gifts of love continue to be given by God and the parents and, supplemented by the gifts of others (family, teachers, religious, friends, companions and so on through life), work towards his perfection and completion as a human being.
It always remains true that no matter how far he progresses, or how perfect and independent he becomes, this human being always remains a creature. As a creature he always has this basic need flowing from his very being — the need to be loved. It may change in its demands, as he changes and matures, but it always remains — the need to be loved.
Yet, while the human being remains always a creature needing to be loved, it is equally true that he is also made to the Image and Likeness of God, sharing in the essential operation of God, which is to love. As he grows from infancy, through childhood and adolescence into adulthood this need to love, to be like God, to give of himself, becomes a stronger drive in him.
Even if only from a more or less acute awareness of our own inadequacies, most of us recognize our need to be loved, to be completed and perfected in our creature status. Not enough recognize the higher dignity and role to which we are called and which we must fulfill, if only for our own happiness, and that is, that being made to the Image and Likeness of God, we must love, we must give of ourselves and do for others.
Marriage Must Exist
In relation to marriage these theological facts of life, to my mind, have these implications.
To paraphrase a well known quotation — If marriage didn't exist, it would have to be invented. It flows as naturally and as spontaneously from the facts of creation and from the nature of human beings, as water bubbles from a spring. The need of the creature — to be loved by someone like himself; the need of the Image of God — to love someone like unto himself; the further need on the part of both to see their love incarnate in their children and/or in the perfection of their own personalities — where can these needs be more wonderfully met on a human level than in marriage.
Marriage, then, might be defined as a lifetime relationship of gifts of love being given according to the needs of the one being loved. On the basis of this definition it is more important for the people in marriage to understand two things.
My Needs — Her Needs
First, one must understand oneself and one's gift of love. Unless this true (although not necessarily complete) knowledge of oneself is had, then any gift of love made will be given inadequately (or not at all), because it will spring from a distorted sense of competency.
Secondly, in a happy marriage one must have not only a proper evaluation of one's own gifts of love, but also a true and continually deepening awareness of the needs of being loved that are part of the nature of the other, the beloved. This is necessary because unless a gift of love is given according to the needs of the one being loved, then such a gift will be sterile and frustrated.
This implies on the part of each a willingness and a desire to act as the image and likeness of God toward the other and a readiness to pay the consequent price of love — the Cross. And here is the mark of the adult, which is probably another reason why marriage is an adult relationship and a good family life the product of a mature love.
The duty and privilege of the teaching Church today lies not only in the protection and embellishment of the institution of marriage. She, as Christ before her, also should help the blind to see. It isn't that people in love need to be told that they are in love. They know that very well. The symptoms are obvious. But it is: important that they be helped to see the answer to another question and that is — How shall we love each other and God well in our marriage?
The answer to this question can also be found in the implications drawn from certain theological facts of life. One of them is this — operatio sequitur esse. In relation to marriage this means simply that a couple are going to love each other according to the way they are made. How then have they been made by God?
Love Grows Through Knowledge
They have been made to love as human beings. If their love is to grow it must be fed by knowledge, which implies the necessity of communication with each other. If in some fashion — and talking is only one kind — they don't communicate, how will they get to know one another, and without growing knowledge love atrophies.
The fault of the average wife is that six months after marriage she is sure she knows all about her husband, and so she stops learning and hence stops growing in the proper love of him. The failure of the average husband lies in the fact that after a few months he is convinced he will never understand his wife, and so he gives up. Hence he, too, stops learning about her and how, then, can he love her well according to her needs, if he is not aware of what they are?
Unique Gift of Love
They will love each other also as unique beings. When God created each partner He did so by a unique and particular act of His creative will. Human beings are not assembly-line products. He created each as a unique and particular facet of His infinite love. To each He gave a unique and particular gift of love, which no one else of all human beings has except this particular partner.
Not even Our Blessed Mother in all her dignity and honor as the Mother of God and the Immaculate One can love as this husband or this wife can. Mary had her gift of love and she gave it tremendously, for which we are thankful. But each human being has his gift to give in his own unique and singular fashion.
Each human being, too, has his own unique and particular need of being loved — his own personal ache and loneliness peculiar to him alone and which will take God Himself to completely satisfy.
In this sense each marriage is a unique thing. That is why there is more than an element of truth in the feeling that the average engaged couple has, that their marriage is going to be different. It will — or should — be different, since it will be the creation of unique gifts of love being given according to unique needs. With God they will bring into being a marriage that the world has never seen before — their marriage.
This is why parents have the right to feel that their children are something special and different from the neighbors' kids. They are the products not only of the unique gifts of love of father and mother, but also of God. These, then, are from God's standards the best possible children these parents could have, because chosen for them by Divine Wisdom. Too, these parents are the best possible ones these kids could have, because who is there better (at least potentially) to satisfy the unique needs of these little creatures than the particular agents of God who are the parents.
Sex, a Sacred Gift
From the infinity of His Love God gives to each partner in marriage another gift of love. For He has given them not only human and unique gifts of love, but also a sexual gift of love. In one case it is manliness, designed always for paternity and his share in the creative love of God, the Father. In another case it is womanliness, designed always for maternity and her share in the creative love of God, the Father. In God love is simple, is one. But for human consumption, to use a phrase, He splits up that love and gives part of it to the man and part of it to the woman and asks them to become one in marriage, completing and perfecting each other and extending the Kingdom of God through a new incarnation of love in their children.
How will this gift of sexual love be given well for the perfection of the people involved and for the honor and glory of God unless the right attitude towards sex is developed?
If the puritanism of our national ancestors, or the Jansenism of our spiritual forebears, becloud this shining gift of God that is sex it will be seen as a dirty, shameful thing. The connotation of guilt, sin, and indecency, and, perhaps worst of all, the air of nonrespectability surrounding sex will frustrate its purpose or abort its fruition.
But, as always, an anxiety to rid oneself of the errors of the past can easily swing the pendulum to the other extreme into the error of the present. In relation to sex this error is obvious. We are living in a sexualized world surrounded by the symbols of sex still without much understanding of what these symbols are intended to signify. The one most ardent in the condemnation of the reticence of the past is too often the quickest to oversimplify sex by identifying it with the physical and making it a thing of the body only.
Again another theological principle helps to clarify. "In medio stat virtus." In relation to sex this means that it is something good because God is its author, and it is something sacred because it is concerned with the giving or the completing of life. Yet while sex is something good in itself, it is not something good by itself.
It must be seen not as something only physical, but rather that the physical gift of sex is intended to be the expression of the previous gift of heart and mind and will, now externalized in the gift of one body to another. Sex, then, is seen as something human.
Love Fulfills Needs
This gift of sex, that is manliness, then enables the husband to be the Image and Likeness of God to his wife by giving of his male mind, his male heart, his male will and body to complete his wife according to her feminine needs of being loved. And she too is the Image and Likeness of God by giving her feminine gifts to complete his male needs of being loved. Both give of their gifts of sexual love in this complete sense, and God gives of His divine love; and they all see their love become one in the child that is the fruit of that love.
But all these gifts of love — human, unique, sexual — have been tainted and distorted by the fact of original sin, because of which it is hard to love. The mind is darkened, so that it is difficult to see the needs of the beloved; the will is weakened, so that the price of loving seems too high to pay.
Christ Needed for Love
But by the mercy of God there is also the fact of Redemption. These human lovers can love, because, first, Christ has loved them. They become more lovable to the extent that Christ grows in them. They are able to love each other more perfectly and completely as their love becomes more selfless in the manner of Christ's love for them. To help them in the Sacrament of human love that is Matrimony, they have only to turn to the Sacrament of divine love that is the Eucharist.
So this is how they are made and this is how they shall love and this is the way of love that is the vocation of marriage. Like any vocation it is not of their choosing. It is their choice of God's choice for them in which He asks them to return to Him the gifts of love He has given to them. Like the religious or single vocation marriage has the same ultimate purpose — the love of God and neighbor. Unlike the religious vocation in which the gifts of love are given directly to God (one of the reasons it is the most perfect of all vocations) and then returned by Him to creatures, in marriage the gifts are made first to another creature and through that creature to God. Thus is fulfilled in marriage the will of God — that each partner should return to Him in the other a better lover of God; that both should return to Him more lovers of God in their children.
The Trinity Reflected — Love
In this, marriage is a preview of eternal love. The couple shares in the creative love of God, the Father. For it is true that not only have they been created by Him, they also create with Him in completing and perfecting each other; and of all created love only theirs is generative of a person.
They share in the redemptive love of God, the Son. For it is true that not only have they been redeemed by Him, but they also redeem with Him in every sacrifice of self they make for each other or for their children.
They share in the sanctifying love of God, the Holy Spirit. For it is also true that not only have they been sanctified by Him, but they also sanctify with Him, since every gift of love they make is a "bond of perfection."
The great wonder is, I suppose, that God loves us. The great gratitude is that He does, since as creatures where would we be without His love. An even greater wonder should be that He calls us, as His Image and Likeness, to love as He loves.
Speaking of married love there is not only the wonder, there is also present, as St. Paul says, "a great mystery."
This item 6119 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
