Marriage: The High and Holy Adventure
Fr. Michael Keating, Associate Pastor

We won't begin to understand human marriage until we realize that it is a kind of image of the Incarnation, an echo of the Incarnation. Contemplate the love of Christ for His Church, and then you may form some idea of what love between a Christian man and a Christian woman really means. For it is as an extension of the Divine love that human love exists.

Fr. Ronald Knox

There is a certain difficulty that comes into play when a priest begins to talk about

This understanding is behind all the teaching of the Church on marriage. The so-called "four F's" of sacramental marriage rise from this source: faithful, fruitful, forever, and free. Faithful: a man and a woman pledge their love exclusively to one another as an echo of the faithful love of Christ for His people, despite sin and failure, and weakness. Christ does not abandon us, but remains constant in love; so the married couple remain faithful to each other. Fruitful: the love of Christ is always creative, ever breaking out into new life. Marriage, which participates in that divine creativity, brings forth new life in many forms, and most beautifully in children, new immortal souls to love and be loved. Forever: the love of Christ will have no end. When He pledges His love He does so not just for a time, but for eternity.  His love is not dependent on circumstances, but rather overcomes them. So the love of husband and wife is promised for a lifetime. And free: Christ came among us to win us to His love, to persuade us with words and deeds of kindness and selflessness. He desired, not a slave's grudging submission to a tyrant, but a friend's loving obedience. So a man and a woman make their promises in freedom, not under compulsion or necessity.

All of this is not the "Catholic view" of marriage. It is simply marriage. Catholics did not make it up, nor can they change it. They just happen to know it. It is God's own revelation to us, based upon the very structure of the Holy Trinity. This is what God made marriage to be from the day He created the human race. 

Our society is running from this true view of marriage as fast as it can go. No surprise: the same people running from Christian marriage are also running from Christ, and nothing so flashes forth the presence of Christ in the world as the daring self-gift of Christian marriage. So some couples, too frightened or too selfish to give themselves away, "co-habit;" others talk of "serial monogamy," or indulge the silliness of "same-sex marriage" (a contradiction in terms); and many modern marriages are arranged like a business contract, full of conditions and loopholes and escape hatches. 

But true marriage is indeed a great adventure, a high and holy foray into the very heart of God, a bold witness to His love affair with the human race. And therefore, like all very good things, very costly and very hard. But very much worth the price.

If you are married, join us in the Young Married Couples Society (see schedule on page 5). On Saturday, November 8, we will have a Marriage Retreat for a day of delving into the riches of this extraordinary sacrament. And for all who are married and struggling to live the grace of this sacrament: thanks for your witness, often hidden to yourselves, but very evident to us, of the love Christ has for us. You are a sign of hope and a bright promise of the life of the coming Kingdom.

marriage. After all, someone might say, "What really do you know about it? Let those who have been married themselves do the talking." And this makes perfect sense for many aspects of marriage, especially matters of practical wisdom that can come only from long years of experience.

But there is another sense in which it is exactly those who have dedicated themselves not to marry who can see the married state most clearly. Precisely because they are not caught up in the seemingly infinite little tasks that make the fabric of a marriage and a family, they can maintain a hold on the fundamental truths more easily. Nor should this surprise us; it is often this way in the Kingdom of Christ, where each is dependent on others, and none are sufficient to understand themselves. There are things about priesthood that a priest can learn only from the laity. Women have insight into men that men do not have into themselves, and men see truths about women that women will not discover on their own. The monk's life can become normal and even tedious to himself; it is others who see his life more truly as a prophetic witness to eternal realities.

With this as my excuse, I will offer a few comments on this "high and holy adventure" called marriage:

I can hear a certain critic now saying, "Look, he's proven right off the bat that he knows nothing of the matter. High adventure? It's only people who have never been married who fall prey to all this sentimental stuff about romance and adventure and being in love.  Just live it for a while, with kids in the picture and a house to run and busy schedules to negotiate, and you'll see how quickly this talk about adventure wears thin." 

But when the Church looks at marriage as an exciting adventure, it is the opposite of sentimentality. The church sees marriage for what it truly is: not two people feeling gooey about each other, which is this world's way of thinking, but something much more profound and important. Marriage, this union of two lives, of two bodies and two souls, is a sign and a participation in the great love affair of the universe: God fell in love with us and desired to engulf us in a rapturous union. This is, after all, the real meaning of the Scriptural phrase in St. John, "God loved us first." It could well be translated, "God fell in love with us." For reasons beyond knowing, even while we were steeped in sin, soiled and ugly, the Infinite and Almighty, the Perfect and Beautiful, became enamored with us and determined to woo us and win us to a life of communion with Him. We now see this only dimly, and experience it in glimmers and flashes, but if one day we gain the kingdom, if Christ has His way with us, we will taste and experience a joy and a fulfillment, an ecstasy of love, beyond all imagining.

So to marriage. Marriage is the sacrament, the mystery, by which two people imitate this love affair and begin to taste of it. The love given by God to a man and a woman when they promise themselves to one another at the altar is an overflowing of the dynamic love that began the universe, and that erupts in infinite beauty between Father and Son and Spirit.