“The Nuptial Mystery of Life in Christ as Revealed in Scripture and
Liturgy”
Lecture for Annual Meeting of the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy
Monastery of the Angeles, July 10, 2014
Presented by Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone
Introduction
“Have you come here freely and
without reservation to give yourselves to each other in marriage?”
“Will you love and honor each other
as man and wife for the rest of your lives?”
“Will you accept children lovingly
from God, and bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church?”
These words sound very familiar to
all of us; maybe too familiar. We can
too easily become immune to the profound reality and awesome commitment these
words express and effect: a man and a woman binding themselves to each other for
life, in mutual love and fidelity to each other, to bring new human life into
the world – new human beings, with an immortal soul, needing the love,
affection and material, emotional and spiritual support that only a mother and
father together can uniquely provide. I
would like, then, in this talk to reflect upon marriage and responsible
parenthood in the current cultural context, and then consider its deeper,
mystical meaning as revealed in Sacred Scripture and the Church’s liturgy.
The State of Marriage
in Society
This “statement of intentions”
establishes what is necessary for a canonically valid marriage – all marriage,
natural as well as sacramental: free will, and then the three “Augustinian
goods” of marriage – permanence (bonum
sacramenti), fidelity (bonum fidei)
and openness to offspring (bonum prolis). It is these three bona, goods of marriage, that distinguish marriage from any other
type of relationship, and identify what it is in nature and define what it is
in the law.
Considered in this light, it becomes
clear that the current crisis of marriage of which we are all painfully aware
has really been going on in our society for a very long time. This latest debate about the very definition
of marriage is simply the next logical – albeit thus far most radical – step in
the redefinition of marriage in the social consciousness. That is, marriage has already been redefined
in the culture, and the law is now beginning to reflect that. Looked at from the standpoint of the three
goods of marriage, we can see how this banalization of the concept of marriage
has been going on for at least the last fifty years, that is, since the so-call
“sexual revolution” of the 1960’s. Just consider:
Permanence: There is no question that the widespread acceptance of no fault
divorce dealt an extremely severe blow to the concept of marriage as a
life-long commitment. This already redefined
marriage as an adult-centered institution based on what the adults look to get
out of it. To put it in the terminology
that comes to us from the teaching of St. John Paul II, this is the
quintessential “utilitarian” norm: one person becomes the means to another
person’s end. When the needs of one are
no longer being met by the other, the basis of the relationship is gone and the
disappointed party can legally back out of it, even against the wishes of the
other spouse who wishes to keep the marriage together. Perhaps you, as I, have known
people who have been severely harmed by this decision – they wanted to stay in
the relationship and keep it working while the person’s spouse simply backed
out and filed for divorce. Now, if we
add to this the now almost universally accepted practice of cohabitation
outside of marriage, and recognize how easily couples move in and out of
relationship, whether it’s cohabitation or marriage, we can see that there is
not really that much difference the popular mentality ascribes to those who are
married and to couples who are not.
Fidelity: Certainly widespread promiscuity does violence to the idea of
marriage as a commitment of exclusive fidelity.
Commonplace cohabitation also contributes to the loss of the sense of
fidelity as one of the defining goods of marriage, even if, of the three, this
one does still have some resonance in the popular culture, at least as an ideal. The social changes that erupted fifty years
ago also eventually saw such aberrant practices as so-called “open marriages”
and “swinging.”
Offspring: We are now witnessing the phenomenon, until recently inconceivable,
of couples marrying with the intention of not have any children at all. Remember
“DINKS”? With contraception and then –
necessarily, given the mentality – abortion, sex has become redefined, no
longer understood as procreative and unitive, but seen rather as a means for
pleasure. Thus, we have here again the
utilitarian norm: the other person becomes a means to an end, rather than an
end in themselves. Because the concept
of sex has now become disconnected from procreation and, in turn, from marriage,
motherhood today is seen as a matter of choice and increasingly a lifestyle
choice. We hear absurd things such as,
“just because she chose to be a mother doesn’t mean I chose to be a
father.” Or the woman who says, “I don’t
know how I got pregnant, it wasn’t supposed to happen.” (I have actually heard this one myself!)
When the choice to have a child is simply a lifestyle choice, then
increasingly it is seen as a means to fulfillment separated from marriage, for
the sake of the adult making the choice, with roles of motherhood and
fatherhood becoming interchangeable.
Just last Sunday the New York Times had a front-page article on
surrogacy, “wombs for hire,” whether the couples are same-sex or opposite sex. And what if the couple decides later they do
not want to have the child, but the surrogate mother wants to keep the child
and is willing to raise the child herself?
As you may know, this has happened, and the surrogate mother was forced
to abort the child against her will.
What could be a more blatant and outrageous example of a child being
treated as an object of desire, a means to an end, rather than a gift of equal
value and dignity to the adult and worthy of unconditional self-giving love –
what St. John Paul calls the “personalistic norm”?
Sadly, this sort of thing isn’t new.
When I was working in Rome – already this was in the late 1990’s – I
remember walking past what was obviously a feminist bookstore. And this was just a few blocks from the
Vatican, very close to the Dome of St. Peter’s Basilica. And there proudly displayed in the window was
a book with the title, “Self-Insemination.”
I thought to myself, “How ironic.
When I was young and ‘women’s lib’ was in full force, the question that
women who were with the spirit of the times would ask themselves was, ‘How can
I do it without getting pregnant?’ Now
the question they ask is, ‘How can I get pregnant without doing it?’”
When the two ends of marriage become not only separated from each other
but irrelevant, it’s no wonder that many people cannot make a distinction
between heterosexual and same-sex relationships, or between marriage and
cohabitation for that matter.
So, you can see how all of this has whittled away at the three defining
goods of marriage, and therefore at the very concept of marriage itself. No fault divorce was, especially, the pivotal
moment, for that put into the law the idea that marriage is for the
gratification and benefits of adults and not about the needs and rights of
children. But ultimately it can all be
traced back to the contraceptive mentality, which is nothing more than the
utilitarian norm applied to sexual relations.
Responsible Parenthood
“Living together without the benefit of marriage”: remember that old
phrase? You don’t hear it anymore. But just what are those benefits? It’s not simply those material perks the
government gives to married couples, which seems to be the exclusive focus
these days. Most especially, it’s those
two “ends” of marriage, the procreation and education of offspring, and the “mutuum adiutorium,” the mutual good and unity of the spouses: the consolation of
children, love becoming incarnate, passing on one’s lineage; and the care the
spouses give to each other, being faithful, not just in their sexual behavior
but in all aspects of their affection and the practical support they give to
each other, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health – to have that
kind of security, to always count on that other person, who has made a sacred
vow to bind him or herself to the other, is a great thing. Notice, it’s not a one-way street: because
the benefits are mutual, so are the responsibilities.
The three “goods” of marriage define
what marriage is, the three things
the spouses must intend in giving their consent for the marriage bond to be put
into place, such that if a spouse were to intentionally exclude anyone one of
them from his or her consent the marriage would not be valid. The two ends of marriage, on the other hand, define
what marriage is for, the purposes
for which marriage is ordered: whether or not they are attained, and the extent
to which they may or may not be attained, does not invalidate the marriage or
minimize its value. However, if the couple willingly places
obstacles to the attaining of these ends it does do harm to the marriage in the
sense that the marriage does not become that “school of self-perfection” to the
full extent that it is meant to be, training the spouses to live ever more
perfectly conformed to the personalistic norm, that is, living the spirituality
of responsible parenthood at its deepest level, the heart and most intimate
part of the couple’s marital relationship: their spiritual-sexual union.
If you think about it, the formula is
quite simple and clear: healthy societies are built on healthy, united
families; healthy, united families are based on healthy, happy, harmonious
marriages; and at the heart of marriage is the spiritual-sexual relationship
between husband and wife. It all really
comes down to that. The whole point is
the plan of God for our happiness: it is clear that in the plan of God marriage
is meant to be a faithful, fruitful, life-long union between a man and a
woman. This school of self-perfection is
necessary not only for the flourishing of the individual but also for society
as a whole. That is why societies that
don’t manage the procreative implications of the sexual act don’t last for very
long. Just look at our inner city
neighborhoods: think of what those neighborhoods were like fifty years ago, and
what they are like now. Is this not due,
in large part, to the scourge of fatherlessness? As someone much smarter than I on this
subject put it, when a baby is born, the mother is sure to be somewhere nearby;
there’s no guarantee, though, that the father will be. Society needs a cultural mechanism that attaches
fathers to their children and to the woman with whom they brought those
children into the world. That cultural
mechanism is marriage, and it’s the only one there is; there simply isn’t any
other. Marriage is the only way
societies have figured out how to harness the erotic energy of youth and
channel it into this narrow but very fruitful way.
So you can see how the evil one
works: it is the Garden of Eden all over again.
Just as in the Garden, so in our own time the evil one has infected this
awesome plan of God for our own human flourishing and happiness with Him at its
root: he attacks the most intimate part of who we are; he attacks the woman’s
fertility so that it is no longer seen as a good and as a blessing, but rather
more like an appliance to turn on and off at one’s pleasure or, worse yet, as a
problem to be “fixed.” And in doing so,
he edges the father out of the picture, acknowledging how critical the father
is to a child’s healthy development. This,
then, instills the utilitarian view: the other is no longer seen and treated as
an inherent good deserving of love simply on the basis of being a human person
(the personalistic norm). And the evil
one does this precisely because he does not
want our human flourishing; no, quite the contrary, he wants our eternal
demise.
Marriage and
Evangelization
The consequences of all this, then,
couldn’t be more serious. But there is
even more to it than that. To understand
what it is, though, we have to look at the Bible, and then at the Church’s
liturgy.
So, let’s begin at the beginning:
Genesis chapter one, the first account of creation. As you know, Genesis 1:27 presents
the creation of the man and woman as the culmination of God’s creative
activity: “God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created
them; male and female he
created them.” The next chapter speaks
of God creating the man first, and then the rest of creation to be a suitable
helpmate for him, none of which, though, meets the mark until He creates the
woman from one of Adam’s ribs while he is asleep. In his first Encyclical, God is Love, Pope Benedict, with original insight, sees here a
connection between monotheism
and monogamy; at the same time he give another original insight in reclaiming
the love that is “eros” with a Christian meaning. He says (n. 11):
… the idea is certainly present [here] that man is somehow incomplete,
driven by nature to seek in another the part that can make him whole, the idea
that only in communion with the opposite sex can he become ‘complete’. The biblical account thus concludes with a
prophecy about Adam: ‘Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and
cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh’ (Gen 2:24).
Two aspects of this are important. First, eros is somehow rooted in man’s very
nature; Adam is a seeker, who ‘abandons his mother and father’ in order to find
woman; only together do the two represent complete humanity and become ‘one
flesh’. The second aspect is equally
important. From the standpoint of
creation, eros directs man towards marriage, to a bond which is unique and
definitive; thus, and only thus, does it fulfill its deepest purpose. Corresponding to the image of a monotheistic
God is monogamous marriage. Marriage
based on exclusive and definitive love becomes the icon of the relationship
between God and his people and vice versa [emphasis added].
This passage of Genesis is critical, because it sets the
pattern for the whole rest of Bible, and for all that will later be revealed
and, indeed, for all of salvation history.
We can
already see this in the next step through the Bible, the prophets. They frequently speak of Israel’s
relationship to the Lord as a bride to her bridegroom. There is also a book of the Old Testament
that is nothing but a collection of love poems: the Song of Songs. Why in the world would a collection of love
poems be entered into the canon of Scripture?
Pope Benedict explains why, also in God
is Love (n. 10):
… the reception of the Song of Songs in the canon
of sacred Scripture was soon explained by the idea that these love songs
ultimately describe God’s relation to man and man’s relation to God. Thus the Song of Songs became, both
in Christian and Jewish literature, a source of mystical knowledge and
experience, an expression of the essence of biblical faith: that man can indeed
enter into union with God – his primordial aspiration. But this union is … a unity in which both God
and man remain themselves and yet become fully one. As Saint Paul says: ‘He who is united to the
Lord becomes one spirit with him’ (1 Cor 6:17).
Is this nothing other than the nuptial mystery, that is, the
two becoming fully one, yet remaining themselves, each retaining their unique
individual identity? This is why the
Song of Songs was the most commented upon book of the Bible in the Middle
Ages. You may have noticed, in fact, in
the Office of Readings for this very day, the second longer patristic reading
is from an exposition of Psalm 118 by St. Ambrose, and he mentions there the
Song of Songs. And then he says: “We
read in Scripture what the Lord Jesus said through his prophet: Open for me the gates of holiness. It is the soul that has its door, its
gates. Christ comes to this door and
knocks; he knocks at these gates. Open
to him; he wants to enter, to find his bride waiting and watching.” So you see, the fingerprints of the nuptial
mystery are just all over the place in Scripture, in Tradition, in our entire
theological and spiritual heritage.
Moving onto the New Testament, we
have various sayings and parables of Jesus alluding to this imagery, such as the
parable of the ten virgins (five wise, five foolish) who took lamps with them
to go out and meet the bridegroom (Mt
25:1-13). It is also significant that Jesus
chose the occasion of a marriage feast to perform his first miracle; his
response to his mother, “My hour has not yet come,” is a reference to the
consummation of God’s marriage to His people that will be accomplished by his
death on the cross.
A truly pivotal passage in the New
Testament, of course, is the fifth chapter of St. Paul’s Letter to the
Ephesians, in which he teaches about the sacramental meaning of marriage, the
man symbolizing Christ and the woman the Church. He then points to this as the fulfillment of
that prophecy from Genesis: “‘For this reason a man shall leave [his] father
and [his] mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one
flesh.’ This is a great mystery, but I
speak in reference to Christ and the church” (Eph 5:31-32). It is a pity that so many preachers avoid
this as too controversial when they have the chance to preach on it, or (worse)
dismiss it as no longer valid because it pertains to a previous age when women
were considered inferior. Actually,
quite the contrary is the case, as St. John Paul II points out in his Apostolic
Letter, Mulieris Dignitatem, where he
speaks about the mutual submission that the husband and wife must make to each
other.
Finally, in the Book of Revelation
the culmination of all of history at the end times is revealed by the wedding
feast of the Lamb. In relating his
vision to us, St. John says, “[T]he wedding day of the Lamb has come, his bride
has made herself ready. … Then the angel said to me, ‘Write this:
Blessed are those who have been called to the wedding feast of the Lamb’” (Rev
19:7.9).
So it is that the Bible begins and
ends with a marriage – Adam and Eve and the wedding feast of the Lamb – and it
is replete with this nuptial imagery all throughout. God’s Covenant with Israel is a marriage Covenant;
it is fulfilled in the blood of Christ on the cross, establishing the new and
eternal Covenant between him, the bridegroom, and his bride, the Church. This imagery is then taken over in the
Christian liturgy, which traces its inspiration back to the Jewish liturgy in
the Jerusalem Temple. There, the altar
stood behind a veil marking off the Holy of Holies, where the priest would
enter on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) to offer sacrifice for his sins and
those of the people. In his book, Jesus of Nazareth, Volume II, Pope
Benedict speaks of how the definitive destruction of the Temple, and therefore
of the Temple sacrifices, coincided right at the moment that Christianity was
established, and the Christians understood the sacrifice of the Eucharist as
replacing the provisional Temple sacrifices, as the Eucharist is the
re-presentation to us of the one, perfect sacrifice of Christ.
The Christian liturgy is, in fact,
heavily influenced by this Temple theology.
As the Jewish-Catholic art historian Helen Ratner Dietz explains (in a
chapter entitled, “The Nuptial Meaning of Classic Church Architecture” from the
book, Benedict XVI and Beauty in Sacred
Art and Architecture), the “fourth-century Christian altar hidden by its
canopy and curtains had a deliberately nuptial meaning … reminiscent of the
Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem Temple.”
Understanding their Covenant with God to be a marriage covenant, the
canopy and curtains in the Temple represented for the Jewish people a
“chuppah,” the bridal chamber used in Semitic marriage rituals.
The Christian practice of hanging a
curtain between the columns of the baldacchino (the canopy over the altar
supported by four pillars) to veil the altar continued throughout the first
Christian millennium (see Pope Benedict in The
Spirit of the Liturgy, citing Bouyer).
This served as a “sacred tent,” sheltering the divine presence,
harkening back to the Ark of the Covenant located the within the Holy of
Holies. The veil “sheltered” the divine
presence. The purpose of a veil is to
conceal. What is concealed is what is
most sacred, and it is most sacred because it is most intimate – thus, the
appropriateness of sheltering it.
Think about our human experience,
keeping in mind here that revelation builds on what is already in the created
order, it does not superimpose itself upon it: clothing is a veil, it shelters
what is most intimate, that is, what most sacred to us about our bodies, which
is why we always keep that part of our body veiled. But the veil has to be removed – unveiled,
revealed – in order for a marriage to be consummated. So we can understand the meaning of the veil
in the Temple being torn in two from top to bottom at the moment of Christ’s
death (Mt 27:51): it symbolizes that, through the sacrifice of His Son, God has
now revealed what before was concealed to us – His intimate, inner life – and
has granted us access to it. The veil,
then, conceals what is most intimate – and therefore most sacred – precisely so
that it can be revealed to allow the nuptial communion of Christ and the
Church. Extrapolating on this, we can
see even more clearly the nuptial meaning of the sacrifice of the Eucharist:
just as the consummation of a marriage is preceded by the unveiling of what is
intimate and therefore most sacred to the spouses, so in the liturgy the
marriage feast of the Lamb to his bride the Church is consummated by him giving
us his flesh to eat and blood to drink, drawing us into a mystical nuptial
union. The Church’s insight into this
truth can be seen from the ancient Latin translation (Vulgate) of the verse
recounting Christ’s last words on the Cross, “it is finished” (Greek): consummatum est – literally, “it has
been consummated.” The drawing back of
the curtain before Communion signifies this entering into nuptial union with
Christ.
In a retreat given to priests in
Ireland, Archbishop Fulton Sheen even spoke of Christ’s blood on the Cross as
his “seminal fluid.” We know this, too,
from the Fathers of the Church: as God created Adam’s bride, Eve, from his side
while he slept, Christ gave birth to his bride, the Church, through the blood
and water that flowed from his side while he lay in the sleep of death on the
Cross. As the bridegroom, Christ gives
the seed of life to the Church; as his bride, the Church receives it, generates
new life for his Kingdom through the water of baptism and nourishes that new
life through the grace of the sacraments – especially the Eucharist (his blood)
– and by teaching his children the truth received from him, the “deposit of
faith.” This is why we can speak of
“Holy Mother Church.”
This also explains the traditional
practice of the “houseling cloth” on the altar rail: in times past,
communicants would put their hands under this cloth when they knelt to receive
Communion. This was done not only out of
respect for any particles that might fall, but it had a deeper symbolic meaning
as an extension of the altar cloth. The
Eucharist is about bed, board and hearth: the altar cloth not only has the
meaning of a table cloth, but all the more it symbolizes bed linen, covering
the marriage bed where the Covenant between Christ and his Church is
consummated. The houseling cloth, then,
was an extension of the altar cloth bringing Christ’s people into that mystical
nuptial union through Holy Communion.
From this, too, we can understand all the better the importance of
worthiness to receive Communion, being in a “state of grace,” a teaching that goes
back to St. Paul (cf. 1 Cor 11:27-29).
Holy Communion is not a simple gesture of hospitality, much less of affirmation! We should think of Holy Communion not merely
as being welcomed to a dinner table but being admitted to a bridal chamber; one
must be worthy.
While the practice of the veil in
front of the altar (drawn back at time of Communion) has been preserved in the
liturgy of many of the Eastern rites of the Church, it has been extinct in the
West for over a thousand years. However,
the sense of the veil has been preserved in other – albeit diminished – ways up
to recent times. Examples of this would
be a veil placed in front of the doors of the tabernacle or immediately behind
them inside the tabernacle, and the veiling and unveiling of the chalice during
the celebration of the Mass. This also
gives a deeper meaning to the old practice of women veiling their heads in
church. In Christian liturgy, the sacred
is veiled, and so again here there is a deeper, symbolic meaning: it is not
just a matter of feminine modesty (which in itself is a sign of respect for
women, so that men not see them as objects of desire), but consideration given
to women as having a special sacred status because they are the bearers of life.
All of this is indicative of a
movement away from paganism toward worship of and allegiance to the one, true
God; and, it is a movement that happens by way of marriage. Picking up on that point made by Pope Benedict
about Adam’s drive for the other that would complete him, Helen Ratner Dietz
explains it this way:
… as the ancestors of the Jews gradually emerged from paganism, God let
them know that … polytheistic worship of nature deities was unacceptable to
Him…. [T]he God of Israel is hetero,
‘other’. He is beyond and before the
universe. His bride Israel yearns for
Him because He is other. And God, in His
own way, yearns for Israel in her earthliness because she, too, is hetero,
other than Himself.
When King Solomon in his later years lapsed into the worship of
Ashtoreth the earth goddess, thereby denying the oneness and otherness of the
divinity, God let him know that there would be deleterious consequences in the
next generation. It was with great
effort that Israel emerged from pantheism.
Pantheism was like a vortex, tugging at Israel to suck her back in,
just as today pantheism is like a vortex tugging at the Church [emphasis
added].
Likewise for us, there will be
deleterious consequences for future generations – there already have been for
the current generation; they are the first victims of the demise of the marriage
culture, if we think once again of the many inner city neighborhoods across the
country as emblematic of the social costs of family fragmentation. But the most deleterious consequence of all
if we lose the basic understanding of marriage in the culture is that we will
no longer be able to evangelize. And
this is not because of the well-documented connection between marriage
redefinition and diminishment of religious liberty. Yes, we bishops are very concerned about
encroachments of the government on our right to carry out our public ministries
in accordance with our moral principles, but, as serious as that is, it is not
the most serious threat to evangelization.
When you consider that the entire
Judeo-Christian religious tradition is premised on the concept of sexual
difference and complementarity in marriage, and then you will understand that,
if we lose that concept, nothing of our faith tradition will make any sense in
the culture. Precisely because revealed
truth is not super-imposed on nature but builds on it – that is, builds upon
truths that are accessible to reason alone from the observation of nature – when
the culture can no longer apprehend those natural truths, then the very
foundation of our teaching evaporates and nothing we have to offer will make
sense. The result is a societal reversion
to the paganism of old but with a unique post-modern variation on its themes,
such as the practice of child sacrifice, the worship of feminine deities, or
the cult of priestesses. Since the
Church cannot but be immersed in the contemporary society, this is that
pantheism tugging at her like a vortex to which Ratner Dietz refers.
Let’s dwell on this for a while, and
take note of a similar occurrence that has been going on in society and the
Church for an even longer time. Another
foundational Christian belief – in fact, the
foundational belief – is the Trinity: God is a communion of three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Moreover, this is not a theory composed by
the human mind in order to help us comprehend the mystery of the Godhead; no,
this is a truth that God has revealed to us, He has taken the initiative to
reveal to us His inner life. But now,
for a lot of people, the idea of God as Father is oppressive and offensive, the
product of a male-dominated patriarchal society (so the worn-out rhetoric
goes). So, if we are going to address
God as “Father” we must also address God as “mother” (note that Jesus never
prayed to his mother, only to his Father).
And of course, we must avoid using the male pronoun in reference to God,
no matter how contorted or redundant it may sound (such as the rephrased line
from the hymn Let All Things Now Living:
“the depths of the ocean proclaim God divine – isn’t “divine” the very
definition of God, such that the two are synonymous?).
Why would this be? Is it not because we are now living in a
fatherless society? Many people today
cannot understand the concept of father, or if they do have a concept of father
it’s a negative one because of the experience of an abusive or deadbeat dad. Just look at how fathers (and men in general)
are portrayed in the culture, in TV shows and in advertising especially: at best
they are superfluous; more often, they are portrayed as buffoons.
Here, as with marriage, God uses what
He put in the created order to reveal to us a deeper, transcendent, spiritual
truth: His love for us, His very inner life.
Now, however, because of the crisis in fatherhood, many people cannot
comprehend this basic truth, which is really Good News: God is not distant and
uncaring, but is our Father, and loves us with a Father’s love. But that doesn’t seem like such good news to
a lot of people.
So you can see what will happen if we
lose the understanding of marriage – we will not be able to evangelize – not
because of laws that forbid it (diminished religious freedom); rather, given
that the entire Judeo-Christian religious tradition is premised on the concept
of marriage, if we lose that concept, nothing of our faith tradition will make
any sense in the culture. And, just like
now some people take pains to avoid using any male reference to God, the same
sort of thing will happen with marriage.
Now, I’m sure you all are not averse to using the male pronoun in
reference to God, but you probably have been self-conscious in doing so in
certain contexts. Well, the same thing
will be true of marriage. This hit me
last year at a meeting of the USCCB, when we were praying Evening Prayer
together. One of the intercessions was
the following: “From the beginning you intended husband and wife to be
one. Keep all families united in sincere
love.” Sounds fine, right? What’s wrong with that? Well, we will not be allowed to speak of
“husband and wife” anymore. So, a
petition such as this will have to be changed to, “From the beginning you intended
spouses to be one.”
The Church’s Answer to
the Crisis of Our Time
But we have the answer to advancing
the new evangelization right within the Church’s tradition. As has happened so many times at critical
junctures in the Church’s history, Christ gives his Church, his Bride, just
what she needs to respond to the challenges to the Gospel in the age in which
she lives.
To illustrate this point at a more
recent juncture in the Church’s past I would point to the development of
Catholic Social Teaching. Think about
what was going on in the world back in 1893 when Pope Leo XIII wrote his
landmark encyclical Rerum Novarum,
which began this whole body of teaching: the Industrial Revolution was in full
swing, and justice in the workforce was the big question of the time. There were all kinds of oppressive practices
in labor at the time. As a result, the
political philosophy of Marxism was on the rise, with its promise of justice
and equality for all. But Marxism is
based on a false understanding of the human person, because it is an explicitly
materialistic philosophy. It excluded
any sense of the spiritual or the transcendent dimension of the human
person. And we know what happened. They promised justice and equality, but what
resulted were the most brutal regimes in human history. The Church’s response ushered in her
tradition of social teaching which is based on a correct understanding of the
human person, seeing the human person as primarily a spiritual being with a
transcendent end open to God and to eternity.
And so it is that we understand work not as merely a means to build up
the economy, but as a means to sanctification.
It’s one of the privileged places where people, within the context of
society, work out their salvation.
Fast forward three quarters of a
century, and we see the social and sexual revolutions of the 1960’s,
revolutions that promised freedom, but, guess what? The philosophy of this revolution was based
on the same mistake, the mistake of a purely materialistic understanding of the
human person. What has been the result? They promised freedom, but have produced
oppression, people trapped in poverty, cycles of violence, despair. It is curious that we are witnessing in our
country now a similar phenomenon to what happened in the Marxist regimes of the
last century. An incorrect understanding
of the human person will always result in untold suffering. The Church’s response? Thanks to Pope John Paul II we can now look at
the world through the lenses of the Philosophy of Personalism and the Theology
of the Body, giving us keen insights into the issues the world is grappling
with today based on the nuptial imagery of Scripture. Here the promise of true freedom is realized,
because we live in conformity with our spiritual dimension and transcendent
purpose.
We’re at a critical juncture in the
history of our country right now, and I think we as Catholics have the answer
that our nation desperately needs, an answer that comes from our spiritual
understanding of life and our intellectual tradition. This is a tradition that has continued to
develop through the ages. All of these
breakthroughs, all of these developments – Catholic Social Teaching,
Responsible Parenthood, Philosophy of Personalism, Theology of the Body –
they’re precisely great gifts to the Church and developments in her thinking
because they have not come out of the blue, created brand new from scratch. Rather, they look back into our tradition,
see what was already there, and bring it out into the light and develop it
thoroughly, drawing out the virtualities of what was already there implicitly. What was always there in our tradition now
becomes more explicit as a response to what we’re facing in our time. At each of these critical junctures of
history Christ has given to the Church precisely the breakthrough she needed to
offer the world an authentically human alternative to the trail of destruction
blazed by defective philosophies and social movements.
Conclusion
It was Blessed
Pope John Paul II who pointed out to us that the Bible begins and ends with a
marriage, and that it is replete with the nuptial imagery all in-between. Let us not forget the exhortation with which
he began and ended his Pontificate, and constantly reminded us all throughout
in-between: be not afraid! It is easy to
be onboard with “be not afraid” when there is nothing to be afraid of, when
there is no adversary who might cause us some harm. “Be not afraid” only counts for something
when there is a perceived imminent threat.
I would ask, though: what is this threat? So far, the only harm we risk incurring is
being called names, having to deal with angry parishioners who need extra
pastoral care to understand God’s plan in all of its depth and beauty. Things are actually much worse for our lay
faithful. They suffer in very real ways
for taking a stand for marriage – losing their jobs or otherwise having their
career advancement blocked, being stigmatized and marginalized in the
workplace, at school, and in other communities in which they interact, and even
worse things than these. But for us,
it’s just a matter of being called names and getting people mad at us. So, I say: big deal. We who are ordained have a great advantage,
because we won’t suffer those other things.
So I would say that we should not back down on preaching and teaching
the truth in charity. You know as well
as I do that when people finally get the Church’s teaching – not just the “do’s
and don’ts,” but what the Church really teaches and why, the wisdom underlying
that teaching – they are converted completely.
Especially, the young people. The
most common comment from the young people one hears is, “Why didn’t anyone tell
me this before? It would have saved me
untold heartache.”
That’s why God’s
plan for marriage, at its very root, its deepest core – the spirituality of responsible
parenthood, and the powerful good it holds out for the couple, the family, and
society as a whole – is, I believe anyway, the key to the New Evangelization. It’s that ah-ha moment: “if the Church is
right even about this, maybe it’s right about everything else, too.” The uniquely sacramental character of
Catholic worship will help to instill this – if we priests celebrate the Mass
properly, reverently and devoutly (and insure its celebration in this way,
providing much needed formation and instruction for liturgical ministers), the
Church will be renewed for her mission from the heart. Just think about the married couples you’ve
known who are faithful to the Church’s teaching on responsible parenthood and
living God’s plan for their married lives – aren’t they the ones who are most
generous, most supportive, most faithful and devout overall, and happiest and
most secure in their marriage?
When you think
about it, the Catholic Church is the world expert on marriage. No one has been involved with marriage more
than we have: for 2,000 years we have been reflecting on it philosophically,
theologically and mystically; for 2,000 years we have been legislating on it
and dealing with it pastorally; we have the vocabulary, the philosophy and the
anthropology, we know how to speak from the perspective of natural law. We can make the case for marriage better than
anyone else. And we shouldn’t be afraid
to do so. I am reminded of a film I saw
on the life of Fr. Jerzy Popielusko with my seminarians last year. He really did
have something to fear. In a film clip
of an interview with him, he spoke of the suffering of Christ and the apostles,
even to the point of death, and he spoke of how the priest must do likewise. He said: “The role of the priest is to
proclaim the truth, to suffer for the truth, and if necessary, to die for the
truth.”
The wisdom the Church has to offer
us, in light of the social and political trends we are facing today, is
precisely what we need to advance the New Evangelization. And the best way to advance it is for each of
us to live our vocation well and faithfully.
When we do that, we bear witness to the joyful, better way of the Good
News. It is both good and new, in fact,
eternally new. What gets old is using
someone for your own gratification.
Giving of yourself, unconditionally to the other, never gets old. Yes, it’s really hard, but when we do that,
our vocation becomes what it is designed for: a school of self-perfection,
forming us into people capable of giving and receiving love, above all, God’s
love, and so we attain our common human vocation: happiness with Him now and
forever in the perfection of heaven. So
let us prepare ourselves to suffer for the truth: our people are counting on
us, and expect no less from us.
BE NOT AFRAID!
