April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
EDITORIAL
A lifetime learning to be married
Thank goodness the weather doesn’t snap into the chill zone all at once. How would we fare if we dropped from 78 degrees and balmy to 31 degrees and grey? In a reverse of the frog that gets boiled without noticing that the water is heating up, we slide gradually from summer through the fall into winter.
One week we add a jacket and the next leave it on all day. We don a tie or scarf one day, and only later the gloves and a hat. We slowly shift from picking the last tomatoes to raking leaves and, eventually, taking out the snow shovel.
As in life, most of us adjust bit by bit and with lots of practice. Thankfully repetition, as Aris-totle taught, is the basis of character. So too with marriage, as detailed in last week’s page 3 package of articles — the sixth in our series on the theology of the sacraments.
And thank goodness none of us have to jump into the fifth or 10th or 40th year of marriage right away. First, we are called to the vocation, and the Church and our friends and relatives help us know if the call is genuine and if we are ready for it.
Second, there’s lots of time — and, in the Catholic Church, lots of help. Who would want to be alone in a marriage? Most of us need all the assistance we can get.
“The steady fulfillment of the duties of this Christian vocation demands notable virtue,” the Second Vatican Council de-clared in the document “Gaud-ium et Spes” (“Joy and Hope”). “For this reason, strengthened by grace for holiness of life, the couple will painstakingly cultivate and pray for constancy of love, largeheartedness, and the spirit of sacrifice.”
Most importantly, as the Catholic Encyclopedia reminds us, “God is the author of marriage.” Divine grace cooperates with human joy to make marriage possible. The love of a wife and husband in a lifelong vocation is a spiritual and earthly gift. Even with God’s help, it’s a mission that we have to work at all our years together.
Even the best of unions, the ones that seem perfect from the outside, contain tales of heartbreak, disappointment and grueling effort. Many humans find it difficult or impossible to completely accept another person just as they are, never mind live with them for decades.
The couples featured in last week’s article both reported the importance of communication in everything from sex to money to religion. The degree to which a wife and husband make known their innermost selves to the other spouse shapes so much of a marriage.
On that honest basis, they find it easier to accept and sacrifice for the good of the union and the family. Good marriages make for a better Church and society.
Of course, a couple does much more than merely live together. They seek to imitate, often clumsily, the love that Christ has for the Church. Other times a couple may be inspired and comforted by the struggles of another couple — one down the block, in the parish or out of the Bible.
Sarah and Abraham, for instance, endured resettlement at an old age, childlessness and their own doubts and folly. Yet they followed God and fulfilled His wishes to the very end. One suspects they had a good time doing so.
(10/29/09)
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