Theology of Marriage (1)Christian Marriage by Padraig McCarthy Theology of Christian Marriage by Walter Kasper Catechism of the Catholic Church (The section on marriage).
Christian Marriage
· A very particular wedding A Very Particular Wedding Think of a crowd - a very big crowd. Everyone going their own way. Nothing special about any of them. All may look more or less the same. All lead more or less the same kind of life, as far as we can see. Imagine yourself as one of them: as one of the crowd. Except that you're not just one of the crowd. Out of all those people, you are the one that someone has chosen to love and marry. To that person, you are someone special - just because you're you. There has never been a couple quite like the two of you before. You can see one another, know one another, love one another, touch one another. You're alive to each other. No one else is alive in quite the same way as each of you is alive. And nobody else can live your life for you. You live your own life, each of you. There's an awful lot you can't do anything about in the world. You can't even change the way you were brought up. But you can live your own life - and nobody else can do it for you. Only you can make up your own mind. You've decided to get married. That's another thing nobody else can do for you - you've got to do it yourself. And you've met someone who has chosen you. You mean a lot to one another. You love one another. You want a wedding. You don't go along to a supermarket and buy one, wrapped up and labelled and priced. A wedding is not something you get - not even from a priest. It's something you do. It's something most engaged couples have never done before. The world we live in is full of marketing, looking for consumers. You may be dealing with many different commercial businesses which can help you in making your arrangements. It may even appear that Christian marriage is one of the consumer choices you can select, and which your Church is there to provide. To put it so starkly can appear strange; it's good to be aware of it, so you can guard against letting this creep into your approach to celebrating your wedding. This book is not going to tell you exactly what to do. I could have picked out parts for everyone to say and do - that would have been [page 33] much easier and very much shorter to write. But there would have been something missing - your choice. If you choose the parts yourselves, you can be sure your hearts are in them. I'm sure you could put your heart and soul into a fixed ceremony, just as much as you could into a marriage that was arranged completely by other people, even down to whom you would marry. A great number of people have in fact done that. But you can put yourself more easily into something you choose yourself. You've decided for yourselves that you want to get married. This book is to help you make it your special wedding. You can choose a lot. Don't just say to the priest, 'Whatever you say, Father.' It's not his wedding - it's yours. A lot of things before and after the ceremony need to be arranged as well. Wouldn't it be strange to go to a lot of trouble over other things and none at all about what will happen at the wedding itself? The priest can help you, of course. But you can do your own planning. You'll find it worth while. Whatever thoughts and ideas you have for the future, perhaps you can put some of them into the way you plan your wedding. It's not the priest's wedding, it's yours. It's good to feel successful. We like to feel we're getting somewhere, doing something worthwhile. When you're married, it won't be just two people who happen to be living together. There'll be something entirely new. That's something very well worth while. Getting married is one of the most creative things you'll ever do. You'll be beginning a new kind of life, a new way of thinking and loving and living, a new life that will go on growing - a life not in the clouds, but down to earth. Love is not in the clouds. You know you love one another because of particular things you do and say at particular times in particular places. And getting married is not in the clouds either. Getting married is a very particular way of living in love - living as husband and wife. 'You can't keep sex in the clouds; it is obviously in bed. What is more, it is in pillow-cases which were Aunt Emily's wedding present.' That's how Rosemary Haughton, a mother of nine children, puts it.Everything important you do is particular. Be particular about your wedding too. A suggestion: Perhaps you would like to take a section or two of this part of the book, 'Introducing Christian Marriage', each week or every few days, for each of you to read, and then sit down together (over light refreshments?) and talk about what, if anything, you make of it. Does that sound like 'homework'? It is homework - not work somebody gives you to do at home, but work towards the building of your home together. A Change of Life When you marry, you're not just deciding to live together and go on as you were; you're choosing a whole new lifestyle. You'll find that your marriage is different - everybody's is. Anything important deserves to be talked about. Your marriage is one of the most important things in your lives. Up to now, the main link has been with whatever family or group you've grown up with. Now each of you is going to change that; your most important link in future will not be with the people you grew up with, but with the person you marry - the person you want to share your life and live with for maybe the next fifty years. Everything important changes you - it changes your life. Religion is many things. The various religions, in many ways, are ways of making some sense of life - what it means to be alive, to be human, in this world, in the many stages we grow through in life. Many people say there's no meaning to life. Many give answers different from yours. Being a Christian means that you find that Jesus Christ helps you to understand your life. Having your wedding in a church is your way of saying what this part of your life means to you as a Christian. As you work through the possibilities for your own wedding, keep asking yourselves: 'Which of these says best what getting married means to us?' Getting married is the beginning of a big change in your way of life. Life is good and important - and holy. Being alive means so many things. It means being awake and doing things; and knowing what's going on around you and enjoying life; and growing; and loving. Loving and being loved means being more alive. Love is holy. 'Holy' and 'sacred' are two of the strongest words we have for saying that someone or something is important. A person, joking, may say something like, 'No - golf (or bingo, or something else) is not like a religion to me - it's much more important than that!' What is 'holy' or 'sacred' to you? What is there in your life that you would want to hold on to and protect, whatever the sacrifice? As you think of the person you commit your life to in love and marriage, can you apply the words 'holy' and 'sacred' here? Not something far away; not something that is not real to you; 'holy' means what is closer and dearer to you than you can find words for. This is true for when we say 'God is holy' too. Being alive is holy, in a very down-to-earth way. Married life is holy in a very down-to-earth way. Did you ever think of being married as a new way of holiness? You can go on all your life learning more about one another, and there will still be something more to know: married life is a day-by-day process. This growing and deepening is what makes your life-long commitment to one another possible. The Dublin-born writer, George Bernard Shaw, wrote: 'When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting state continuously until death do them part'. But he was wrong. If he were right, marriage would be madness. What he describes can be part of our lives, and can be exciting. It is valuable and helpful to recognise the truth of what our feelings are at particular times. But your commitment in marriage is governed, not by feelings (which can change with the weather and with many other things), but by your decision that you will love the one you marry for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, all your lives. This is something far more solid and dependable. If it is also inspired by the kind of love we see in Jesus Christ, you have an extra source of strength. In two of the readings from letters of St Paul (Romans 12 on page 134 and Colossians on page 144), he talks about 'holy people', saints. Not people who have 'gone to their reward', but people like yourselves; people who may not always live like saints, but who want to live a true and full life, as Jesus did in living and in laying down his life; and married people who want to live that love together.Remember 'Holy Days'? Your wedding day will be a Holy Day. How Deep Is Your Love? You may have seen cartoons in newspapers, and greeting cards on sale, trying to say that 'Love is...' this or that. Some can be true and inspiring; some may be superficial; some may be false; some may even be quite offensive! Whatever we may say, genuine love is beyond what words can say. What I say in this section is simply my attempt to put into words that love, as Christian tradition understands it, goes deeper and higher and wider than we ever suspect. This goes for married love as well. I hope this will make some sense to you now, and even more in the future. Love is like peace. Peace is not so much a destination I long to arrive at, nor the way I feel inside; it's much more the way I live today, the way I travel the road of life today. Love, too, is a way of life - the way I live each day; a way of thinking and acting and speaking. It can be as comfortable as a pair of old shoes, or as fresh as a new coat. It has moments when you can go about your activities, so absorbed that you're not consciously aware of the other person; and it has moments when you're so close that you're hardly two people, but one. Love is something bigger than you or me, or all of us together. (The reading from chapter 4 of the first letter of St John on page 149 actually says that God is love!) When you're married, your love will show itself in the way it takes you over as you make love, and in the way it guides the ordinary, everyday things you do. In a way, your love hardly belongs to you - it's as if you belong to love. If the God we speak of is really the God of everything, then your love is an experience of God. God is love - strong and gentle and unconditional and close and holy. It's hard to believe that someone loves you if he or she does not show it. You can't love in theory without putting it into practice. God shows you love by creating the world, and the people in it; and by creating you. You experience God's love for you in the way you love one another as husband and wife. And in giving yourselves to one another in love, in the many different ways you do this, it's not just your own love you give; you also give, and receive, God's love from one another. Could you think of your love as a reflection of God's love? Even more than a reflection - could you think of your love as the 'embodiment' of God's love - God's love made real in you? This is part of what we mean when we say that marriage is a 'sacrament' of God's love. Your marriage is deeper than just the two of you loving one another and deciding to make the rest of your lives together. It will be one of your most important ways of coming close to God. It begins on your wedding day, and lasts all your life. Clearly, you won't be always thinking about God, any more than you will be thinking of one another every moment of every day; but that does not mean that you don't love one another, any more than it would mean that God has vanished from your life. The God that Jesus lets us know is the God always with you, through the bright days and through the dark days. A God who is there, not to write down every mistake to charge you with, but the God of intimacy and tenderness and compassion and love. The God of your love for one another. The God of your ordinary everyday love, and the God of the closest and most intimate times of your love. Think about your love for a minute: your love for one another now, and on your wedding day; your love a month later, a year later, then, twenty, fifty years later. How you will keep on showing your love. How close and how deep it is now and how close and deep it will be. That's how God loves you, too. That's what the sacrament of marriage means: your love gives an idea of what God's love is like. It's some of God's love in action. Have you something concrete to aim at? How about something like this: to be able to say each wedding anniversary, 'This last year has been the best year of all so far in our love!' Why Complicate It With Religion? Sometimes it seems that religion makes things more complicated and difficult than they really are; whereas exactly the opposite should be the case! So I hope these few pages will make some sense. It's not so much 'bringing religion into it', as seeing where human life and sexuality and marriage are already involved with our relationship with God. If you look at the first of the scripture readings from the book of Genesis (you'll find it on page 111), there's a simple story with a valuable insight: the sexual relationship between a man and a woman is not something evil or shameful, made grudgingly permissible by marriage; nor is it a god to control our whole lives. Rather, it is one of God's greatest gifts to us: 'God saw that it was very good!' What do we normally mean by 'gift'? When you give someone a birthday present, it's as if you were saying something like 'I'm glad you were born, and that you're here now!' It's something more than just a 'thing' that we get or give. It's a means of communication - a means by which the giver says something, and the receiver accepts the message as well as the gift. It's an encounter between persons. If we talk about sexuality and marriage as a gift, what could that mean? Your marriage involves many things. Deep down, as you meet one another, it is an encounter with God. Hard to believe? That God, who is so 'super-spiritual', can touch you in something as earthly as your marriage? This is one of the wonderful insights that the coming of Jesus gives us. Jesus is our 'God with us'. Jesus was born in a place as real as the place you were born in. (Read about it in chapter 2 of St Luke's Gospel.) A birth is a very flesh-and-blood experience. Jesus needed the kind of looking after that any baby needs - feeding, and cuddling, and cleaning. And yet we say that in Jesus, we meet God! Yes, it is hard to believe - just as hard to believe that you can encounter the presence of God in your marriage. But if you let Jesus into your lives, you can discover for yourselves the truth of it. And not just in the 'loving' times. The end of the life of Jesus was not a warm, comforting, 'spiritual' experience: it, too, was a very flesh-and-blood experience. And yet we say that here, too, we are touched by the love of God in Jesus Christ. If you put a reminder of Jesus in your home as a married couple, it can help you keep something of all this in mind. We are human beings, flesh and blood. It is in and through our human lives that we meet God; are touched by God. Jesus spoke about his Father; and about the Father's love for him and for us; and about our loving one another. Jesus also promised to be with us all days, until the end of time. But then Jesus went away. Does this mean we've just got to accept this, with no experience of Jesus being with us? The first followers of Jesus faced this too. And they made a remarkable discovery. When we sincerely follow Jesus, and love one another as followers of Jesus, we discover that something else happens too. We find that love is rather bigger than we thought (and often not as easy either!), but we begin to recognise that, in some extraordinary way, Jesus is with us. It is true what Jesus said: 'Wherever two or three come together in my name, I am there among them' (St Matthew's Gospel, chapter 18, verse 20). Can I prove it? No. Can you prove that you love someone? You may do all the things that normally seem to indicate love, but love is something beyond these; it's sad that we can use these signs of love when love is not genuinely there, for our own selfish reasons or from thoughtlessness. Knowing that someone loves you is something almost beyond all proof. And knowing that the love of God is very much there in our love is something we just have to experience for ourselves. Like riding a bike, or swimming, or knowing personally what living a marriage is, it's something nobody else can do for you. You have to experience it for yourself. Where Does 'Sacrament Come In? As the years and centuries went by, there were further developments: Christians began to realise more clearly that this experience of the touch of God who is love is realised in a special way in some particular human experiences - ways we now call Sacraments. Just as you can express and give love in a sign that we call a handshake or a kiss, the realisation grew that in marriage we have a special sign of God's love for his people. You could look at it something like this. Two people who marry give an unconditional promise to love one another for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, all the days of their lives. This is a sign for each of them that that's the kind of love that God has for them too: an unconditional, eternal love. The commitment 'to love you for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, all the days of our life' is a sign that God promises to be faithful to us no matter how unfaithful we may be. A wedding service in an old York Manual which may go back to the fourteenth century adds 'for fayrere for fowlere' - that is, 'whether you're more beautiful or more ugly'! Not only that, but in showing that love to one another, each partner gives the other not just his or her own love, but is actually a channel of God's love for the other person. And looking beyond the couple themselves, their faithful love for one another, is a sign to their local community and to the world that this kind of love really is possible; so that we can look at the couple who are a living example of it and say 'There must be something more to this: there's something divine about it: God has a hand in this!' Every way a wife and husband have of loving one another, from the simplest expression of friendship, to washing socks or digging a garden, to the most intimate act of love -all these can actually bring the couple both closer to one another and closer to God at the same time. You might say that they make saints of one another by loving one another! Isn't that what bringing someone closer to God means? Before marriage, you might say, each makes his or her own way to God within the Christian community. Now, as a married couple, they are together a living sacrament in the Christian community: a living sign and instrument of God's love for one another and for the world. That's something of what it means to say that 'marriage is a sacrament'. Not just that there's a blessing for you on the day of your wedding; not just that God wants you to live according to his rules in your marriage. The gift is that you are enabled to be an extraordinary gift of divine love to one another and to the world. Since so much of this may seem extraordinary, I may as well add one final extraordinary thought. You may remember learning in school that marriage is a sacrament (although you probably did not hear about the strange things on the last few pages!). So, if marriage is a sacrament - well, marriage doesn't just happen in a church building, even if, for Christians, it normally starts there. Marriage is mostly outside the church building. Just as a song can't exist without a singer (a song on paper is not fully a song until it is sung), in the same way, you can't have marriage without the people. So, if marriage is a sacrament, then you, the man and woman who are living your marriage, are a sacrament. A living sacrament. Everywhere, every moment. You are a living sign and channel of God's love for one another and for the world. Say this together, looking at one another: "We are a living sacrament!' And if you feel like smiling, or falling around the place laughing, so much the better. Because it is crazy. And wonderful. And true. But Normal People Don't Find That! Dr Patricia Marshall wrote:
Could We Work On It? Before a couple marry it would be good if they could talk together about who God is for them; and to share it also as they grow and develop through the years that follow. Many couples planning to marry will have shared with each other about nearly everything else, even the most personal things, but perhaps not about what part religion plays in their life. How you pray is very personal. That's good. But that doesn't mean you have to keep it all to yourself. Wouldn't it be strange if this were the one and only part of you that you never got to share with one another? How much do you know about this side of each other? What do you think you know about your partner's experience in these matters? Maybe you could tell each other. Here is a suggestion to help you start; you may have other ideas of your own. Take half an hour, or an hour, or as long as you want. Each of you takes a blank sheet of paper, and draws a line down the centre from top to bottom. Write the first of the following questions right across the top, and on the left of the line, write how you think your partner would answer it; on the right side of the line, write how you answer it for yourself. Then write the second question across below that, and answer both sides. The questions are just to help you focus on what your own experience of faith and religion and God may have been. If any question does not seem to apply to you, or doesn't make sense to you, just skip over it. 'Don't know' is an okay answer! If reading or writing is a problem for either of you, perhaps you can find another way to approach this. Don't be afraid to make mistakes: there are no bad marks for not doing well. Don't worry about the spelling of the words. What is important is that they are the truth about what you know. Your first answer may not be your last one. Some memories can be buried very deep. It may be a voyage of discovery, both into your own life and into the life of the one you plan to marry. When you're both finished, exchange the pages with some simple sign of affection. Then read what the other has written. Read it with respect and reverence: what's written can be very personal and private. Don't read it to disagree or criticise, but to understand. Be prepared perhaps to be surprised. o When you're both ready, talk about what you find there. Be honest with one another. o How often do I think about God? o Was there ever a time in my life when I felt the nearness of God? Was there ever a time in my life when I felt really far from God? o When I think about Jesus Christ, how do I feel - warm? cold? nothing? o Does Jesus Christ influence my life? If so, how? o Do I pray every day? about once a week? occasionally? rarely? o How do I pray when I'm alone? Kneeling, or sitting, or standing, or lying in bed? At home, in a church, out in the open? o Do I pray in my own words, or in words I learned by heart, or from a book or leaflet? Do I pray sometimes without words? o Do I have a favourite prayer? a favourite piece from the Bible? o To whom do I pray? God the Father? Jesus Christ? The Holy Spirit? Mary? A favourite saint? o Did my family ever pray together when I was growing up? If so, how? How did I find it? o When we are together, do I ever have a sense of God's love for us? o Any other question or comment in this area that strikes me? When you have shared these things with one another, you might like to talk further about some more aspects of your life together, arising from your answers. Again, some of these may not apply to everyone. o Have we gone to Mass together? o Have we ever prayed together, apart from at Mass? o Could we pray when we're alone together, either in silence or aloud? o Could we pray a prayer that we are both familiar with? o Could either of us pray aloud with the other, in our own words? o What about when we are married, what will we do? o If and when, please God, we have children, what will we do? o Could we tell one another about our difficulties in faith as well as our strengths? o If your faith is strong, how will that affect me? o If your faith is weak, how will that affect me? o How can my relationship with God affect you? o How can your relationship with God affect me? If you can get around to sharing these things with one another, and to praying with one another, you may find that it can give your relationship an entirely new dimension that you may not have suspected. You may find, too, that at times when your relationship with one another is at its best, your relationship with God will also be at its best. Must the Church Be Involved With Our Marriage? This question may well be the strangest one to get your teeth into, because many people's experience of being the Church is so far from the 'vision' of what the Church is called to be. But this may be the best time in your life to tackle it because right at this time you yourselves are aiming for what a song calls 'The Impossible Dream'. Your aiming at that 'dream', and your working at it together, can very well help to bring us closer at the same time to the 'vision' of what we, the Church, are called to be: people united in a love that is eternal. The Church is involved for exactly the same reason that you may want your families and friends to be involved. The Church is (or is meant to be!) a community of people, united in our faith, in helping one another to follow Jesus Christ, and in wanting to bring his message and life to the world. If your intention is to have a church wedding, it must mean in some way, even if for some not too strongly, that you are part of the life of that community of the Church, and that community is part of your life. After all, if you are not in any way a part of the community of the Church, why would you want a church wedding at all? Just because it's a location you like, or because it's the tradition in your family - are these good reasons for wanting a church wedding? On the other hand, if you have not been a part of the community of the Church in any real way in recent years, now would be a good time to talk together about how you can begin to find your way back. Your church wedding, and your marriage afterwards, would then mean so much more than just renting the building for a day, and hiring a priest for the job. Usually you tell your family and friends about your wedding, and, where possible, invite them to the wedding. You will need at least two people there as witnesses of what you're doing, as well as the minister who 'assists'. Sadly, it may not often be as obvious how the 'Church' - that is, the community of Christians - is involved, except as the 'official' body you go to to get married. This may be due to how anonymous and distant our experience of our Church and our parish can be - we who are the Church have a lot of work to do in this sphere. Yet it is still true that every real follower of Jesus Christ is a member of the one Body, all a part of one another. On page 138 you'll see a reading from chapter 13 of St Paul's first letter to the Corinthians: a familiar one about the gift of love. Get a copy of the Bible or the New Testament (the Christian writings in our Bible), and read the chapter before that: chapter 12 - different gifts as members of the body, all sharing the one Spirit. One writer describes Christian marriage like this: It is a call, a vocation from God through the Church that asks the couple, 'Will you please spend your love for each other for us? Will you allow us to look at you as a sign of how we are to love one another in the Church? When we gather with you, will you touch us by your tenderness and desire for each other? Will you be responsible to us in how you live your life together? Will you allow us to continue to call you to live your life of unity more totally and completely as time goes by? ...even at those times when you do not feel like forgiving and healing one another?' ...As in Ordination, the primary focus of matrimony as a sacrament is the Church, while the central focus in non-sacramental marriage is on the couple and their family. Matrimony as a sacrament does not ignore the focus of simple marriage, it includes and transcends it for the well-being of the Church. (Thomas L. Vandenberg: A Sign for Our Time - The Sacrament of Matrimony: Veritas Parish and Family Resources, Dublin, 1982) The Church is involved because it was through the Church that you received life as a Christian. Not the Church as a building you meet in; not the Church as it can appear to be, just the full-time officials; but the Church as the Body of people who find that, as followers of Jesus, they have a tremendous bond of unity, and who value each and every member of the Body. And now that you are planning to live a Christian marriage together, this is a cause of great joy for the members of the Body. Living your Christian marriage will actually be a proclaiming of the Gospel, the Good News of God who is Love - and has the possibility of touching more people than many a sermon in church on Sunday! The Church stands with you as you make your commitment and as you accept this gift from God, and its presence there is a promise of solidarity with you over all the years of your marriage. In marrying in the Church, you ask the Church to support you in your times of joy and your times of difficulty and sorrow - that is a gift from the rest of the Church to you. Your gift to the Church as a couple will be that you teach us how to grow in our loving. When you 'make love', that is exactly what you will do, for yourselves, and the Church, and the world. Love is not like a store of credit that we use up some of each time we 'make love', until finally some day it may just run out; rather, each time you or I act in love, we make love grow greater. This doesn't only happen through sexual intercourse, but through all the experiences of love that a couple share. Not only through the tender affectionate experiences, not only the sacrifices they make, but also through the mistakes, inadequacies and rows. Married quarrels are among the bitterest there are. Only people who know each other well know exactly where to put the knife to hurt most. And this can be destructive. But it doesn't need to be if only we remain willing to learn. Willing to learn about ourselves and our own failures, willing to learn about our partners and to accept their shortcomings, willing in a word to learn about love. (Dr Patricia Marshall) The Church needs to learn from you, as well as you from the Church. That isn't the kind of Church you know! I'm sure a great many Christians would say the same. We who are the Church fail to live up to the reality of what we are. You, too, if you are human, will have your failures as you find that loving is not always as easy a way of life as we sometimes expect. We are called to so much more than we are at present. We need to be reminded and encouraged again and again. Your married life could be an inspiration: the dedication and sacrifice and forgiveness you gladly put into your love for one another is a challenge to the Church. With all the faults and failings a Christian marriage or family may have, it is what is sometimes called 'the Church of the home', the 'domestic Church'. The personal touch a home can have is a challenge to the rest of the Church to imitate that. Just imagine if we did just that! But The Church Is So Against Everything! Why is it that so often Church teaching about marriage and sexuality seems to come across as 'Thou shalt not!'? And the way it has been communicated at times has not always been the happiest. It can seem so different to what Jesus says: 'I have come so that they may have life -life in all its fullness' (St John's Gospel, chapter 10, verse 10). That is the purpose of all his teaching, and of the teaching of the Church. If you're looking after a small child in a room with a fire, and you see the child approaching the fire, you might say: 'Don't go near that fire!' and you could very well have to repeat it. Why? Perhaps because you're afraid you'll be blamed if anything happens to the child; but if you love the child, it will much more likely be because you don't want the child to be hurt. Certainly not because you don't want the child to have fun, or to learn something new; nor just because you'll be offended at the child doing something you said not to do! To take some examples: when the commandments or the teaching of the Church tell us 'Thou shalt not commit adultery', it's for the same reason: that God, in his love for us, doesn't want us to come to harm, but wants us to be fully alive, with all possible joy in living and loving. But like with the child, we may not always appreciate it like that! In the same way, for example, the teaching about not having sexual intercourse with a person you're not at the time married to is not intended to deprive you, but precisely to enrich your life. This is an area where many people find a considerable problem. The very idea of not having sex except within marriage seems totally unrealistic and outrageous. Any suggestion that it is not wise to live together as a husband and wife for some months or perhaps years before getting married, seems very old-fashioned, at the very least. Having sexual intercourse is portrayed often as simply a normal recreation without much deeper meaning than going to a film or for a drink together. It is taken as meaning no more than a particularly warm handshake; just more enjoyable. Even the idea of 'Never have sex on a first date' is irrelevant where the purpose of going out for the night is to 'score' or 'get laid' (or whatever words are used at the particular place and time), and it may not even matter who the other person is: may not even be known. If, for one person involved, 'Last night didn't really mean anything', while for the other person it seemed that it did mean something significant - well, that's just one hurt or disappointment you've just got to learn to get over. Many of you may have had the experience of being shattered in a sexual relationship. There can be a lot of pressure on people to go along with what 'everybody is doing'. There can be pressure from within where two people know they are ready to make a lasting commitment, but 'we can't afford to have a wedding yet' - so why not live together until we can afford the big day? This book is not the place to discuss all this in depth. There are many serious implications for how men and women relate, and especially for the long-term relationship of marriage. There are also many serious implications for physical health. What I do want to present here is an understanding that each and every person, man and woman and child, is immensely precious and valuable, and, as a child of God, never to be used by another just as a means of pleasure, but to be loved and cherished. Sex does in fact have a deeply inter-personal value - it is not just contact of body-parts. I do want to present an understanding of marriage, and of our sexuality, as among the greatest and most enriching experiences in human life, and in the life of Christians. Each person or couple reading this will have their own situation and experience. Please read what follows, and discuss it together. Talk about what you find good in what you read and understand. Talk as well about what you're inclined to reject. If there are implications for your life as you prepare for marriage, you can work things out together with faith and trust in your love of one another. If you have got this far, it probably means that your religious faith is valuable in your life; so it would be good to pray, separately or together or both, to ask God to let the Spirit of love guide you as to what is best in your situation. In our Christian tradition (which much of the world would not accept), the fullest expression of love in intercourse is a way of saying 'We are fully committed to one another, and we intend to be always faithful to one another in love, just as God is always faithful to us'. To use the means of expressing that, when it is not true that the partners are fully committed to one another, is false, and harmful to both partners - whether they realise it or not. If there is falsity involved, it is not 'true love'; although it looks exactly the same as 'making love', rather it is 'making sex'. Even if the two partners genuinely love one another, the fact is that there is something false in the expression of their love. When two people love each other very much, each will genuinely find happiness in doing whatever is really good for the other. In 'the heat of the moment' it can be difficult to be aware that what you feel you really want at that moment may not be what is really true love, even if you have talked it over together fully many times. It is something that has to be learned. And if there are failures to be 'true lovers' - remember that for human beings, forgiveness is as much a part of God's love for us as it must be of our love for one another. The same loving purpose is behind all the other teachings and commandments. You might like to talk with one another about other aspects of what our Christian tradition says in relation to our sexuality, both for single people and married people, and see if you can make sense of it in your own situation. What's Love Got To Do With It? There's a song which asks: 'What can I do to make you love me?' Sometimes what we think is love gets very mixed up with other motives. Love is not something we can make a person give. If someone says, as the words of another song go: 'She's so beautiful, I know I've got to have her!' - is that love? It may sound very flattering, but it also sounds more like lust, or greed, or selfishness - it certainly is not focused on what will bring joy and life to the other. True love is always a gift given freely. Fr Tony de Mello tells this story:
We can be side-tracked from the way of love. It's good to be aware of this, so we can keep our eyes open! We love to be around the people we love. But if another person says to you: 7 need you - I can't live without you!' - whose happiness does this focus on? Does it set you free, or possess you? Sexual love clearly has an important place in marriage. But it is not what marriage is all about. Sexual love, expressed too strongly and too early in a relationship, may prevent the relationship maturing. It is a mistake to expect sex alone to sustain a relationship indefinitely. Even though it is sometimes called a 'relationship', there may in fact be no relationship of two people whatsoever. It takes time to grow and mature in love. We need to give it time; we need to make the time, even when it seems we are 'wasting time' when we could be 'doing' so much else. From the first meeting, to the growing interest in the other person, to the first steps in a commitment; and so it goes, until we meet a time when, perhaps all of a sudden, we realise, 'It's not as easy to love as I used to think!' We discover that love is not about "You've got to do first what makes me happy - right?' Rather, the amazing promise the bride and groom make at the wedding says: I take you as my husband/wife Loving, and marriage, do not fulfil all of a person's wants and needs for the rest of their life. In true love, and in marriage, we learn that we do not have the power to be everything to the one we love. In times of trouble or sickness or bereavement, we may feel helpless even to bring comfort. This very powerlessness is made all the more acute by the depth of our love. This can be a sign that love is finding its growing pains; its steps towards maturity. A German writer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote:
Here, we who are followers of Jesus Christ can remember that the way of love is also the way of the cross. Jesus said that there is no greater love, than to lay down your life for your friend, the one you love. Not that we foolishly look for 'the cross'; nor that we carry the cross resentfully, or angrily, but in love. Remember how you can be willing to do extraordinary things, make great sacrifices, for the one you love, and do it willingly and freely and joyfully. The early Christians saw that there is a close connection between how Jesus laid down his life freely in love for his people (the 'Church'), and how a husband and wife lay down their lives freely in love for one another. This is the 'mystery' St Paul mentions in his letter to the Ephesians (reading on page 141). We can look, as Jesus did on the cross, into the darkness; we may even feel totally abandoned; and still, even here, we hold on to our faith in the one or ones we love. We may not see how, but, with Jesus, we live by the knowledge that no cross can overcome the God of love, the love God gives us for one another. We live Good Friday and Easter Sunday. As Jesus said to Peter, speaking of the Church, the community of his followers who would be known by their love: 'The gates of hell can never overpower it'. As the letter of St Paul to the Corinthians on page 138 says:
A Wedding Says What? Of course, we all know what a wedding is. We know what walking is, what a football match is, what love is. But it can be hard to put it into words. You may like to try to put into words your understanding of the meaning of your wedding. You might describe what could be seen of your wedding on television - that is, what can be seen on the outside. But try as well to say what the real event will be: what happens between the bride and groom in their hearts; what happens between you not just as a man and woman, but also as people who follow the way of Jesus. I'd like to offer some suggestions to get you chewing! See whether these ring a wedding bell with you; change them as much as you want till you get nearer to what you would say. Your wedding is when you say in public: 'We belong to each other in love for the rest of our lives from this moment on, and we want you all to recognise it!' Before your witnesses and your world, you say: 'The two of us here are going to live in a way that will show how much we love each other. We believe in living for each other- this will make us even more alive. Whatever kind of people we are now, and whatever we may be like in the future, we each promise to love the other unconditionally for the rest of our lives. Whatever hurts we may have, our love will be still stronger. We believe God is inspiring our love. Our love will tell you something of how much God loves. We need your help and your love to support us in this dream. We want you to know about our dream, and to share in it. We want you to take heart from us. We believe that life and love will never die.'
Each of you may have a different way to say it, whether in a few words or in many. If you can find words of your own to say what your wedding will mean to your partner, or if you can find someone else's words that seem to say it for you, you may like to speak it out to one another. Or if you can, write it to one another in a letter of love; or have it set out in a form you could frame and hang on the wall of your home. And you may like to read it every year or every five years, and see how you would then express it more deeply. As you plan your wedding, remember what you want to express and celebrate; so that people looking on from outside would get the meaning from what they see and hear. Interchurch and Interfaith Marriages An 'interchurch' marriage is where bride and groom are members of two different Christian Churches. An 'interfaith' marriage is where one or other is not a baptised Christian. If you belong to different Christian Churches or communions, this is something you should take plenty of time to talk about together. The faith and the Church in which you were brought up can have a very deep effect on you and it's important to go on learning to understand each other. It can be helpful to get together with a minister from each Church to talk about it. Above all, remember that you already share something very important: your faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord. If one of you is not a Christian, it is equally important to share what you believe in with each other. The experience of talking about faith in Jesus with someone who does not share it can teach a Christian a great deal; so can the experience of really listening to someone with quite a different background and outlook on life. You are still as welcome in the Church for your wedding as any other couple. Coming to a Catholic church for your wedding may already be a sacrifice for the non-Catholic and his or her family. Arrangements for mixed marriages have changed a lot in recent years and may vary from place to place. Because of this, it is best to consult the priest in the parish where the wedding will take place. And you can still work on your wedding ceremony together, so that, as far as possible, it speaks for you both. Religion can still play an important part in your married life afterwards, where each of you respects deeply what the other regards as holy. In addition, the question of the upbringing of the children is one you will need to discuss deeply. Where both of you are Christians, contact with other such couples can be good. The addresses at which to contact the Association of Interchurch Families are listed in Part V on page 242. Episcopal Directive In a booklet called Preparing for a Mixed Marriage, the Irish Episcopal Conference wrote:
Do we have to get married in the Catholic Church? The general rule is that a Catholic must marry in the Catholic Church, or, to use the technical term, 'according to the canonical form'. Discussions between the Churches have not yet reached the point, except in relation to the Eastern Orthodox Church, at which the Catholic Church could give general recognition to mixed marriages which take place in another Church. This is mainly due to differences between the Churches with regard to the recognition of purely civil marriages and of divorce. At the same time, in particular cases, where serious pastoral reasons may seem to warrant it, your local bishop will give sympathetic consideration to a request to allow the marriage to take place in the church, and according to the rites of, another denomination (cf Pastoral Directory on Mixed Marriages 12). In this case, the Catholic Church fully recognises that ceremony as a sacramental marriage. If he is invited, and in accordance with the wishes of the minister of the other Church, a Catholic priest will attend and take part in the ceremony and say some additional prayers and blessings; as long as the marriage does not take place in conjunction with a celebration of the Lord's supper, he may read a lesson and preach. A Catholic priest may not, however, conduct the marriage ceremony according to the rites of another Church. While invitations to your wedding are obviously a matter for yourselves, the Catholic Church would wish that a minister of the other denomination should be present. If he attends, he will be given a place of honour in the sanctuary and he should be invited to say some words of greeting or exhortation and/or additional prayers and blessings. If there is no Nuptial Mass, he may read a lesson and preach. The wedding ceremony itself must, however, be conducted by a Catholic minister. May we have Mass? This is a matter for discussion between yourselves and the priest. Provided that your partner is baptised, the bishop will allow Mass, but you should first consider the options carefully. On the one hand, your partner and his or her family may not want to have Mass since they could not participate fully and would, perhaps, feel somewhat excluded from a ceremony in which they would wish to be fully involved. On the other hand, if your partner and the other family might interpret the omission of Nuptial Mass as expressing any lack of fraternal feeling towards them as fellow Christians, perhaps Mass should be celebrated. |
