WHY BOTHER WITH A CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE? – PART II CHRISTIAN REASONS FOR MARRIAGE
We saw in Part I that in today’s culture, many couples (i.e., a man and a woman) so often live their relationship, married or otherwise, at a horizontal, flat level. In this two-dimensional flat life, happiness is sought exclusively from what the other can give to me in the form of some expressions of love but the focus is still almost exclusively on myself. The couple also looks for their happiness in what the culture offers: vacations, sex, fine dining, financial security.
In Part I, we also looked at the Human Reasons for getting married. We concluded that the reasons for marriage on the human level do not present an overwhelming case to enter marriage. In fact, this is one of the main reasons why there has been such a significant drop in marriages worldwide accompanied by an increase in co-habitation. Couples go through a kind of interior and exterior dialogue as to the motivation and rationale for marriage and increasingly come to the conclusion that it all doesn’t’ seem to be worth it!
But then one or more crisis enter into their relationship – a human inevitability. The two dimensional culturally conditioned life begins to experience cracks, fractures and splintering. The pain that results causes one or both of the couple to begin to question the meaning of the whole experience. But all too often, the relationship had some level of a disconnect with God where the nature of another dimension, of Someone else who has an interest in their love, has never been a factor or had become irrelevant.
The meaning of why a couple should be together or stay together is then obscured and even lost. The suffering between a couple in an intimate relationship becomes unbearable at the human level and, quite understandably, the couple cries out “No more! I just need to get some space!” It is then precisely the crises in a relationship that directs one or both of the couple to a deeper, more foundational reason for marriage.
So let’s take a look at:
THE CHRISTIAN/CATHOLIC REASONS FOR MARRIAGE.
We begin looking at the Christian Reasons for Marriage by first wondering whether there is another dimension to our lives beyond the horizontal one to which we seem so attached. This wondering, usually in the midst of some struggle or suffering, is a questioning that is actually a result of the love of God breaking through the barrier of the two dimensional life style. And how does God actually do it? That is, in the real world of the life of the couple how does God speak to them?
Well, first, the very event of the crisis is the language that God uses to make the couple begin, just begin, to look upward from their flat life. And what do they see? What does God show them? The couple sees a creation, a revelation of love that draws their attention. And what draws their attention?
The Encounter With a Christian Family
The creation of a couple living in the midst of a love of both deep joy and of deep struggles and suffering is revealed. Maybe this couple, this family, is encountered under the most ordinary of circumstances; a dinner party, an encounter in the neighborhood, a meeting at work. What is seen and experienced is a display a love for each other that somehow does not seem entirely human and begins to reveal another dimension of Love. This is a love where the giving of one’s life for the other is made real and concrete. Perhaps the guy drinks too much, gets drunk too often and becomes very difficult to live with. And yet the woman loves him by giving of herself to him even in the midst of the suffering; more than that ,the woman takes on the man’s suffering as her own and comforts him with a love that seems beyond human love.
Further, this couple that God shows forth also has children at their side! And the children somehow make visible in their new lives, the love that the man and woman have shared in the intimate act of sexual intercourse that was open to life and the exchange of love. A new creation is then revealed, the existence of a family – a family founded on a love that is not possible in the two-dimensional life of our culture.
It is a true gift of God to reveal this family to our couple who has now stood up, extending themselves into the third dimension. So it is logical for our couple to then approach this family and ask very directly: “Where do you get this strength, this joy, this happiness that you show, even in the center of your crises and suffering? What you have is what we, deep down, have been looking for all along.”
The answer from the family is very simple and direct: “We are in a Christian Marriage – a Marriage that is in the continuing plan of God for us – a Marriage that finally gives meaning to why we met, to our journey, to our mission. It is from this Marriage that we live our lives in a spirit of joy and gratefulness. We live in a Catholic Marriage which brings to us a reality that we never realized was there – the reality of Jesus Christ who is operative and present in our lives.”
From this revelation of a Christian family, built on the sacrament of a Catholic Marriage, to our now standing couple, much needs to be spoken of, which we will do shortly. But once our couple sees this Catholic family, it causes them to turn and ask themselves: “Why did WE meet? Where are WE going? What is OUR mission?”
THE MYSTERIOUS PLAN OF GOD FOR A MARRIAGE
“Why did WE meet? How is it that WE met?”
What a great joy it is when a couple gets to the point of asking these questions about themselves! Have you asked them yourselves? When we ask questions like this, we are beginning to rise from our flat life and are lifting our very being upwards to experience this whole new dimension of the love of God. When we ask these questions, we are like standing at the door of the very mind of God, the One who created each of us and the One who has had a plan for this couple since the very beginning.
For all couples there is an air of mystery in the history of their meeting each other. Even those who have known each other from grammar school to those who met much later in their lives, the question is always relevant. Why did we meet? Was it all by chance or is there something else going on? Is there a reason for us to be together – to even consider spending our lives together?
To answer this question is to open oneself to the reality of the existence of God who is Love and that each of us have been in the mind of God before we appeared as creatures here on earth. God “knew” me, Bob, before my parents set eyes on each other. I have been in the heart of God from before the beginning of any time. Similarly, for my wife Joan, God had already “known” Joan before her parents had discovered each other. The outstanding reality is that from the very heart of the One who created us, thee has been a plan for each of us individually and then as a couple.
A Little Bit of Our History
We are a couple, now in our 62nd year of marriage and we continue to marvel at what God has done with each of us and with us as a couple. Bob’s parents were from Germany ad immigrated to New York City in 1928. They married and had Joseph, their first bon in 1930. In 1939, when Bob was 5 years old, the family moved to Queens Village, a suburb of New York whee Bob spent the better part of his early life.
Joan’s parents were from Ireland and also immigrated to New York where they married. They had four children with Joan (born in 1936) as the second oldest. Her mother died in childbirth when Joan was about three years old. All of the children were then disbursed into different families with Joan being taken in by her aunt, Margaret O’Shea who lived in Cambria Heights in Queens, less than two miles from Bob. Joan’s father died when she was about seven so Joan grew up as an orphan being loved by her aunt and uncle.
And so this girl and this guy grew up, independent of any knowledge of each other but smiled upon by God who had the most mysterious plan to be continually put into place. In the fall of 1954, outside of the Sacred Heart Parish auditorium where a weekly dance was held for those over 18 years of age (so beer could be served), Bob sat in his car with his friend Vinnie. It cost $2 to get into the dance and Bob was surveying the girls entering to see if it was worth it that night. Young ladies passed in front of Bob and Vinnie but none seemed to stir the heart until Bob spotted a most beautiful young woman walking by and Bob turned and asked Vinnie “Who is that?” “That’s Joan Coyle”. Bob: “Let’s go, Vinnie!” and into the dance he went, walked across the gym floor and asked this young woman: “Would you like to dance, Joan.” And they began to dance with Joan asking “How did you know my name?”
All of this is clearly not by chance! Let’s take an overall look at this history of this couple. This Bob and Joan have been in the mind of God from before time, two unique individuals, created in being with a destiny and a mission. One was inserted into a whole history immersed in Germany, the other in Ireland. In 1934 and 1936, this man and woman were born, revealed as creatures of God to begin their life’s journey. And in 1954-55, they began their courtship, not free of stumbling and suffering, but aimed toward their Christian marriage in 1957. From the love of God breaking through the barrier of irrelevance, a family emerged of seven children with generations thereafter.
THE LOVE OF GOD IS REVEALED IN THE REFLECTIONS OF THE COUPLE
So when the couple begins to ask themselves:
“How is it that we met?”
a little reflection on the individual histories reveals very quickly that the “How” is not due to some strategy that either the guy or girl had but, in it’s very depth, is an outcome of the love of God for each of them and for them as a couple. Chance encounters do not exist in the overarching wonder of the love of God for the couple. That Love is the Third Dimension, the awareness that we have been brought together as a couple not by chance, not just to fulfil our human desires but as a reflection of a much greater Truth – the Love of God made real in the creation of the Christian Marriage.
For the couple to reflect on their history is to then lead them to the next obvious question(s):
What is the reason we met? What is our mission as a couple?”
Now we are moving ever closer to the very heart of the existence of the couple. To even begin to ask the question of what our mission is as a married couple is to realize that the objective of being called together by God is not just for myself, for my satisfaction, for fulfillment of my desires. Rather, we have been brought together as a couple for a reason, for a mission which immediately gives a meaning, a purpose to our journey – not just a bourgeois life-style focused only on myself but a life of a much deeper meaning which immediately creates a deep joy and happiness.
Mission- To form a Christian Family
The mission of the couple is to make present a Love that is based not on self satisfaction but on the willingness, even the eagerness, to give one’s life for the other. Then, the guy is ready to offer his very life out of love for his wife and the woman is ready to give entirely of herself to her husband. The “fruit”, the outcome, the consequence of this self-giving is a growth of the couple and the emergence of new life, of children from this self-giving love between husband and wife. So we can then say that the Mission of the couple is to form a Christian Marriage and Family within this self-centered culture as a sign of the Love of God which transcends everything.
But new issues now emerge: do I really believe that we have this kind of mission for us in Marriage? If so, does my guy (or girl) believe this together with me? Also, while I want to give my self in Marriage, I realize from my experience that I simply cannot give my life to the other from my own strength. I am actually very limited in my ability to love, really love! So while the Mission to form this christian family is very laudable, it simply seems impossible to love in that depth, in that dimension.
And that is true! It is impossible at the human level to love like we have described. This kind of love is something very special, distinctive and at the core of human existence.
The Nature of the Love of Jesus Christ – the Heart of Christian Marriage
This love is given to us in the love of Jesus Christ, in his nature – the very reason for Christ entering into our world – to give us His nature, a nature that can love beyond human love and in so doing provides the peace and joy that is meant for Marriage.
We do need to explore and penetrate into this reality, this mystery more deeply.What does a Christian marriage consist of? What does it mean? What does it mean to love in this new dimension of Jesus Christ?
We will now look at all this in Part III of this blog.
