LOVE IN MARRIAGE AS A MODEL FOR ALL

 

LOVE IN MARRIAGE AS A MODEL FOR ALL

In the Gospels Jesus is asked which is the greatest of the Commandments.  The answer, of course, is that one must love the Lord thy God with all one’s heart, soul, mind and strength, and one’s neighbor as oneself.  Jesus tells the disciples at the Last Supper that if they love him, they must keep his commandments, especially his new commandment, which is to love one another as he has loved them. 

These are inspiring words, but when we speak of love it needs to be specified.  Love of the Father, love of Jesus, and love of neighbor must be expressed in concrete acts.  Feelings and emotions are involved in all love, but true love goes beyond them.  Feelings and emotions are fickle, but love is steadfast and unending.  Such love is expressed not in how I feel but in what I do. 

Jesus taught his disciples: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command you” (John 15:12-14).  All love requires sacrifice, but especially that which moves us to embrace a vocation.  A man presenting himself for ordination, or a woman for perpetual vows, or a man and a woman thinking of marriage, must show a readiness to sacrifice themselves, for without it, true love will not exist, and their vocation will be threatened.  This is why a young lady must have confidence that the man she will marry can, and will, sacrifice himself for her and for their children.  Will he sacrifice convenience, time with his friends, energy, plans for the future, comfort, security?  In their time of dating has he shown a willingness to defer to her interests over his own.  For example, does he respect her chastity? her work? her interests? her time with family and friends?

St. Paul calls married persons to share a love which is divinely enabled: “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her…Even so, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.  He who loves his wife loves himself” (Ephesians 5:25,28).  The commitment of the man to his wife should be like that of Christ to his Church.  All Christians are called to “Be subordinate to one another, out of reverence for Christ” (Eph 5:21).  This is possible when they follow the new commandment.  Love moves the wife, as his equal, to assume a certain deference towards her husband as head of the domestic church, “For the husband is head of the wife, as Christ is head of the Church, his body, and is itself its Savior” (Eph 5:21-23).  The wife mystically embodies the love of the Church for Christ in her relationship with her husband.  Such love is not subservient or slavish but participates in the spousal love of Christ and the Church.  It brings life, joy, and unity.

“Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude.  Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong but rejoices in the right.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never fails” (1 Cor 13:4-8).  Such love in a marriage will keep it together.  Love makes us subordinate to one another, to prefer the other’s well-being to our own.  “Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3).  No marriage is as perfect as that between Christ and his Bride, the Church, but wife and husband are called to this ideal, as Jesus has called all his followers to be perfect as his heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48).  We can be perfect in love when our eyes are fixed on Christ, and we strive to love one another as he loves us.