Gn 2:18-24
Ps 128:1-2,3,4-5,6
Heb 2:9-11
Mk 10:2-16
I’m going to talk about marriage. I was at a post office one day. It was supposed to be a quick trip, but you know how that goes. I spent about half an hour there, mostly waiting in line. [I know some people pray to God for patience, well the best way to practice is at the post office right around lunch hour.] Anyways, while I was waiting in line, I was thinking about how I could make this situation better. I thought – it would be really nice to have some gourmet coffee or a nice frozen smoothie while I wait. They could really make a lot of money here … People always have to wait, they might as well do something. Yeah, they should sell coffee it would be really great, knock out these windows here and set up the stand right there. Millionaire over night!! [If you steal my idea, I got 10% of the profits]
Then I thought about how successful it would be and how great the coffee would be. You know it could happen and pretty soon chairs and little tables could be set up and you could really have a coffee shop and a good one too! The post office could adopt this idea, stop raising postage rates, and really be in a strong market to sustain not only the mail service but also the coffee business. AND if it becomes really successful, I bet there would be some people who would go to the post office just to get their coffee. Going even further if the coffee was so good it may even turn out that this post office coffee business might overtake the business of mailing letters and packages. There are other competitors that do that, perhaps even better. Could you imagine a post office that almost exclusively sold coffee? Then I thought to myself… would that post office still be a post office? Or is it now a store that sells coffee? Philosophical questions in the line at the post office.
Interestingly enough, the situation with the institution of marriage is not dissimilar. Why do people get married? Your average Joe and Jane Catholic will probably say something along the lines of “because I love them and I want to spend the rest of my life with them” or “I’ve been with him/her for 3 years, I guess I should make him/her an honest man/woman” or “To start a family and settle down”. These answers are all correct to some degree, but institution of marriage actually has a fundamental purpose – the essence of marriage.
Institution - a set of behavioral expectations/purpose in society (e.g. bank, schools, hospitals). As an institution has a set expectations, anything outside of those expectations has the ability to change the institution. Therefore institutions have a set of expectations and purpose in society and the changing or tampering with the purpose then you don’t have the original institution anymore. In the past, the institution of marriage had a primary and a secondary purpose. The primary purpose of marriage was the procreation and education of offspring, the secondary was the mutual help or the good of the spouses. Up until a little before the last century, there was no question why one got married: to further the future of the family – love didn’t enter the picture as much. Then there was discussion about the importance of love and the mutual help of spouses and there was talk about re-ordering the primary and secondary ends and eventually they were combined in Vatican II and in the Catechism and in Canon Law. (cf. ccc1601, ccc1055, GS 48)
This proposes a potential problem. What has happened with this shift is that when there are “two primary goals or ends” one can win out of the other. If the post office delivered mail and sold coffee as its primary ends, one could and would win over the other. When marriage and the pro-creative sexual union are “divorced” as it were, marriage then becomes all about the other primary end: “the good of the spouses”. When the “good of the spouses” no longer seems good or important this leads to divorce doesn’t it? Archbishop Fulton Sheen in his book Three to Get Married writes, “The pleasure associated with love [conjugal act], or what is today called ‘sex’, is the frosting on the cake; its purpose is to make us love the cake, not ignore it.” Love then, “…is directed to someone else for the sake of the other’s perfection; sex is directed to self for the sake of self-satisfaction.” “If I’m tired of you and you are no longer satisfying me and this relationship is not working out, then I’ll get rid of you.”
Marriage must be connected with the conjugal act. The conjugal act is the ratification of the vows made before the Church, the people of God, and most importantly God that the spouses desire to give themselves completely to each other fully and for the rest of their lives. It is so special and so sacred that why the Church seeks to protect this institution. Why is the Church against same-sex marriage? Because it cannot be naturally pro-creative. People with same sex attraction can be friends, they can be “mutually helpful” to each other as one would any other brother or sister in Christ. But to elevate a relationship to marriage would entail that you can be naturally pro-creative and that is simply not the case. Why is the Church against contraception? Because it is not pro-creative it separates the unitive and the pro-creative aspects of marriage. One puts a barrier and/or purposefully tries to block out the potential for the creative action of God.
Think about it: God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. The two joined together in a love that is so strong, so deep, so intimate that they transcend their beings to an act of the Divine and new life is conceived. Mankind has been on this earth for thousands of years and science is just now attempting cloning, where a husband and wife can bring about a child in an intimate moment. Children are a constant sign of the single moment of love that is shared between husband and wife. Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.
Do I even need to talk about divorce? Divorce does not – and cannot – even enter into the picture. If the love between husband and wife imitates the Divine Trinitarian relationship, a husband and wife can no more divorce each other than God can divorce Himself from Himself or divorce Himself from us. Our God created us in His image and likeness, we are to be imitators of that Divine relationship. He made us little less than angels and humbled Himself in the person of Jesus Christ for our sake to show us the way to love. He suffered for us, that we may be called His children. For all of us that are single we look to you – married couples – as witnesses of God’s love for mankind in the world. You have such an important role – we see your children, we see your love, we see God.
No comments:
Post a Comment