The Thirty-second
Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
Dear brothers and sisters,
There are some today who take offense at
Jesus when he says, with the authority of God, that “The children of this age
marry and remarry; but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age
and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage”
(Luke 20:34-35). In an age in which so many spouses seemingly forget the
promises they made on the day of their wedding – namely “to love and honor each
other for as long as you both shall live” – we have a tendency to say that
marriage is forever.[1]
But this is not true; marriage lasts “all the days of my life,” “until death do
us part.”[2]
With death, marriage comes to an end. Why?
In somewhat veiled terms, the Lord Jesus
gives us the answer to this important question. It is because those who will be
raised from the dead on the Last Day “can no longer die, for they are like
angels” that they will neither marry nor be given in marriage” (Luke 20:36).
Saint Bede the Venerable explains this answer further when he says, “Since
matrimony is for the sake of children, and children for the sake of posterity,
and posterity for the sake of death, where, therefore, there is no death there
are no marriages.”[3]
On the one hand, this might at first
glance appear a negative assessment of marriage; on the other hand, however, it
gets right to the heart of the purpose of marriage:
By the Sacrament
of Matrimony Christian spouses signify and participate in the mystery of unity
and fruitful love between Christ and the Church; therefore, both in embracing
conjugal life and in accepting and educating children, they help one another to
become holy and have their own place and particular gift among the People of
God.[4]
In other words, the purpose of marriage is
for a husband to help his wife become a Saint and for a wife to help her
husband become a Saint. When this is forgotten, the marriage begins to fail.
Marriage, of course, is founded upon love,
but authentic love is not always understood today. More than anything else,
love is a choice and an act for the good of the beloved. The emotion of love
comes and goes; sometimes we feel loved and sometimes we do not, but our
emotions are not always reliable. This is why the highest form of love is not
an emotion but, rather, an act of the will, a choice for the good of the other,
even – and especially - at my own expense.
Understanding love is somewhat complicated
by our language; we only have one word for love, and so we say I love you and
this dog and this book and this pizza; we use the same word without distinction
and lose something in the process. The unknown author of the Letter to the
Hebrews, however, knew three Greek words for love, each with its own particular
meaning. The ancient world, however, knew several different words for love. The
Greeks, for example, knew of three.
The first form of love was called eros and was a “possessive or covetous
love,” even a “worldly” love.[5]
The second form of love was called philia and was the “love of
friendship.”[6]
The third and highest form of love – a love without self-interest – was called agape.
Likewise, the Hebrews knew two words for
love. “First there is the word dodim, a plural form suggesting a love
that is still insecure, indeterminate and searching” and in this way is very
much like the Greek eros.[7]
This comes to be
replaced by the word ahabà, which the Greek version of the Old Testament
translates with the similar-sounding agape, which … becomes the typical
expression for the biblical notion of love. By contrast with an indeterminate,
“searching” love, this word expresses the experience of a love which involves a
real discovery of the other, moving beyond the selfish character that prevailed
earlier. Love now becomes concern and care for the other. No longer is it
self-seeking, a sinking in the intoxication of happiness; instead it seeks the
good of the beloved: it becomes renunciation and it is ready, and even willing,
for sacrifice.[8]
This love is like that of agape and is very much like the love of Christ
Jesus for his Bride, the Church.
It is generally the love of eros, a self-seeking love, which first brings a couple together.
If this love of eros does not develop
into the love of philia, into a love
of friendship, the relationship will fall apart under the weight of narcissism.
And if the love of philia does not
then develop into the love of agape,
into a selfless love, the relationship will remain one of mutual convenience,
but it will not become the love intended by the Lord for Christian marriage.
There is a temptation today to
over-romanticize marriage, to think it will somehow automatically bring about a
life of bliss with no difficulties. The reality, however, as any honest couple
will tell you, is not quite so picture perfect. Marriage is difficult. It requires
compromise, patience, and gentleness; and when these are embraced, marriage is
also beautiful, perhaps because of its difficulties. Like the Christian life in
general, marriage is simple, but it is not easy. It is simple because, at its
core, it involves only one thing, namely, that every day each spouse desires
the good of the other above his or her own and labors to obtain that good for
the beloved; each spouse must strive to build the other up in Christ for the
glory of God. In this, marriage is far from easy.
The great J.R.R. Tolkien, a devoted
Catholic and the author of The Hobbit and
the Lord of the Rings, reflected on
the reality of marriage in a letter he wrote to his son Michael in 1941. Then,
after twenty-five of his fifty-five years of marriage to his beloved wife
Edith, the elder Tolkien wrote these words:
Faithfulness in
Christian marriage entails that: great mortification… No man, however truly he
loved his betrothed and bride as a young man, has lived faithful to her as a
wife in mind and body without deliberate conscious exercise of the will, without self-denial. Too few are
told that – even those brought up ‘in the Church’.[9]
The professor here speaks of a danger for
the groom in marriage, but lest some think marriage brings no danger for the
bride, we might note the temptation of the wife to always imagine herself to be
right. Marriage, for her, too, requires deliberate conscious exercise of the
will, that is, self-denial.
To put it in simpler terms, in the bonds
of marriage, a husband is bound to care more about his wife than he cares about
himself. Likewise, in the bonds of marriage, a wife is bound to care more about
her husband than she cares about herself. Without deliberate conscious exercise
of the will, without self-denial, neither can do this. I do not want anyone to
be unaware of this. But if husband and wife live with deliberate conscious
exercise of the will, with self-denial, they can, with the grace the Sacrament
of Marriage provides, put each other first and grow together in the love of
Christ.
Among the words of profound spiritual
counsel left us by Saint Marianne Cope, one of my favorite saints, are these:
“Creep down into the heart of Jesus.” The reason she tells us to do so is
simple: “He alone can comfort you in your supreme hour of sorrow.” These might
seem strange words for a homily about marriage, but the truth of her words
cannot be ignored, nor can the reality of marriage as a form of the cross, in
that marriage requires a daily renunciation of oneself in favor of the spouse
to become a reflection of Christ’s love.
A husband and wife should creep down
together into the heart of Jesus each day of their married life. They should
look around within his heart and poke around, exploring each day what it means
to love fully and to love “to the end” (John 13:1). As they help each other
creep down further into the heart of Jesus to conform their hearts ever more
closely to his own, they will help each other to become saints, the first and
primary purpose of marriage. Then they will be able to emerge from his Sacred
Heart to love as he loves, teaching each other – and all who see them – how to
do the same. If they live and love in this way, they can show to a darkened
world the bright light of love so that, together with them, all may find their
home in the heart of Jesus. Amen.
[1] Order of Celebrating Matrimony,
60.
[2] Ibid., 61.
[3] In Saint Bonaventure, Commentary
on the Gospel of Luke, 20.42.
[4] Order of Celebrating Matrimony,
8.
[5] Pope Benedict XVI, Deus
caritas est, 7.
[6] Ibid., 3.
[7] Ibid., 6.
[8] Ibid.
[9] J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter to Michael Tolkien, 6-8 March
1941. In The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien.
Humphrey Carpenter, ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000), 51.
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