11. The Great Mystery

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God does not have one law for Holy Rollers and another for Holy Romans. Even in the natural order the lover's language is never temporal nor promiscuous. There are only two words in the vocabulary of love: "you" and "always." You, because love is unique; always, because love is enduring. No one ever said: "I will love you for two years and six months." All love songs have the ring of eternity about them. Love, too, has its sign language. Lovers often carve their names inside of two interlocked hearts on an oak tree to express the fixity and permanence of their love. True love "alters not when it alteration finds." Each person has only one heart, and as he cannot eat his cake and have it, so he cannot give his heart away and keep it. Jealousy, which has been instinctively inseparable from the beginnings of love, is a denial of promiscuity and an affirmation of unity. Jealousy is nature's vanguard to monogamy.

In the natural order, too, every child has a fundamental right to a real mother and father. The flesh and blood originators of life alone can put into play those spiritual forces which are essential for the development of the child. Social culture also demands a permanent bond between man and woman, for no civilization can endure without responsibility and loyalty to one's trust. When 50 per cent of married couples feel that they can throw overboard pledged loyalty in order to suit their own pleasure or convenience, then the hour has struck when citizens will no longer feel a need to keep their pledges to America as citizens. Once a citizenry does not feel bound to the most natural and democratic of all self-governing commonwealths, the home, it will not be long until it ceases to feel bound to a nation. When a Mrs. White is ready to call herself Mrs. Brown, then it will only be a short time before Americans will be calling themselves Soviets. The traitors to the home today are the traitors to the nation tomorrow. A people who are not loyal to a home will not be loyal to a flag.

The permanence of the bond is necessary also for sacrifice. So long as a nation of families learns to renounce the "mine" in the "ours" of their offspring, there is strength. The family then becomes a training school in self-discipline; it crushes egotism for the sake of the group, as all members learn the supreme lesson of living with others for the sake of others. But if there is the slightest disagreement resulting from the eating of crackers in bed, or if the other party fails to give pleasure, or if the desire of greener pastures makes the present grazing less appealing; if every emotion, whim, appetite, and fancy has a right to be satisfied even at the cost of another person; then what shall happen to the sacrifice so necessary for a nation in time of crisis and conflict? The fewer sacrifices a man is required to make, the more loath he will be to make those few. His luxuries soon become necessities, children a burden, and the ego a god. Whence will come our heroes in a crisis, if we no longer have heroes in the home? If a man will not put up with the trials of a household, will he put up with the trials of a national emergency? Once the need of sacrifice for maintenance of the home is uprooted, there is simultaneously uprooted the need of sacrifice for the maintenance of a nation. Only a nation that recognizes sweat, toil, hardship, and sacrifice as normal aspects of life can save itself, and these virtues are first learned in the home.

The decline in the permanence of family life is, therefore, intrinsically bound up with the decline in democracy. Here democracy is understood, in its philosophical sense, as a system of government which recognizes the sovereign worth of a man. From this flows the notion of the equality of all men, and the repudiation of all inequalities based on race, color, and class. Nowhere is the dogma of the worth of a man better preserved and practiced than in the family. Everywhere else man may be reverenced and respected for what he can do, for his wealth, his power, his influence, or his charm; but in the family a person is valued because he is. Existence is worth in the home. That is why the crippled, the sick, and those who are of no economic value to the family are given more affection than those who normally provide for its subsistence. The family is the training school and the novitiate for democracy. Free and promiscuous marital relationships are the training ground for treating humans, first flippantly, then cruelly. The protection of the weaker members of society, the socially disinherited, and the economically dispossessed depends upon a sense of responsibility to those handicapped, which is best fostered in the home. As persons lose a sense of loyalty and obligation, the State picks it up, and then begins the tyranny of the weak. State socialism, understood as State control not only of the means of production but also of life itself, is the political expression of psychological laziness and irresponsibility first manifested in the family.

Within the broad field of culture, too, the indissoluble family tie is one of the best forces for the sublimation of awakening sex feelings. From the beginning, a boy or girl in a good family has been associated with a permanent institution whose function is the prolongation of life. Sex relationships thus become inseparably bound up with the moral and spiritual side of life. They are sublimated, not by a false self-expression which "makes hungry where most it satisfies," but, rather, by integration into a lifelong bond instead of a momentary self-indulgence. The most stable youths, from a moral point of view, come from those families where the creative instinct is inseparable from an unbroken and perpetuating love. In Dante's Inferno the slaves of Eros are depicted as being whirled helplessly through the air by one gigantic, erotic whirlwind. But such aberration and uneasiness never come to those who, in a family, learned that sex and service are inseparable.

The marriage of pagans, primitives, and non-Christians in general is still a res sacra, because the use of the flesh of man and woman is not something completely at their disposal; it is God's way of preserving and continuing mankind. Their act is incomplete and insufficient to attain this end without Divine co-operation, for it is God who breathes a soul into the life of a child.

Marriage is a mystery, St. Paul tells us. Its meaning becomes clear only in relation to another world of spiritual reality. It is an index and symbol of a higher world which alone gives it significance, just as the countless sacrifices throughout the centuries have meaning only in the Cross and the Atonement of Our Lord. An equally important idea is that of Nuptials, which has always been in Christian Revelation an earthly symbol of a Divine Reality. Throughout the Old Testament, the union of God and Israel is described as Nuptials. God is pictured as the Husband; Israel as the Bride; and their union is consummated in sacrifice. "Husband she calls me noe.... Everlastingly I will betroth thee to myself; by the keeping of his troth thou shalt learn to know the Lord." (Osee 2:16-20)

As time goes on, we see a gradual evolution of the Nuptial idea. The Bridegroom changes from the Lord to the One Whom He sends, namely, His Divine Son. When Christ was born, this idea of Nuptials was so familiar to the people that John The Baptist, with a certain casualness, says that "he was not the Christ." A moment later he implies that he is a friend of the Bridegroom, but not the Bridegroom. "He it is, who, though he comes after me, takes rank before me." (John 1:27)

Our Lord implied that He had come for His Marriage to His Spouse, the Church. Negatively, He did this by calling Israel an "unfaithful and wicked generation." (Mark 8:38) Positively, Our Lord did it in His answer to the Pharisees who wanted to know why His Disciples did not fast: "Can you expect the men of the bridegroom's company to go fasting, while the bridegroom is still with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot be expected to fast; but the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them; then they will fast, when that day comes." (Mark 2:19, 20)

It is highly significant, too, that "Jesus began his miracles" (John 2:11) at a marriage feast. At that moment, He addressed His mother for the first time as "Woman," the formal title of a Bride in the spiritual sense, and as it later appears in the Book of the Apocalypse. At the Last Supper, or Passover, Our Lord made a new Covenant. The Passover was a sign of the nuptials of God and Israel. In this new Covenant, He was actually solemnizing a spiritual marriage between Himself and His Church. As a pledge of that eternal union, He gave His Body and His Blood to His Spiritual Spouse. Speaking of that unity in the analogy of the Vine, He said, "You have only to live on in me, and I will live on in you. The branch that does not live on in the vine can yield no fruit of itself; no more can you, if you do not live on in me. I am the vine, you are its branches; if a man lives on in me, and I in him, then he will yield abundant fruit; separated from me, you have no power to do anything." (John 15:4, 5)

When St. Paul had received his Revelation directly from the Lord and began to teach, he wrote to the Corinthians: "I have betrothed you to Christ, so that no other but he should claim you, his bride without spot." (2 Cor. 11:2, 3) As Eve was a continuation or a projection of Adam's body, "bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh," so the Church is the continuation of Christ's Incarnation. "Each of us has one body, with many different parts, and not all of these parts have the same function; just so we, though many in number, form one body in Christ, and each acts as the counterpart of another." (Romans 12:4, 5)

The abundant references in the Scriptures to the Church as the Body of Christ have, as their basis, the idea that the Church is the Mystical Bride of Christ. The Church is His Body, because it is His Spouse. In developing the analogy, St. Paul speaks of Christ as the invincible Head of the Body, and this is because: "The head to which a wife is united is her husband." (1 Cor. 11:3) It is very likely that the Divine prohibition against women appearing in Church with their heads uncovered is related to this idea. As the Church can have no Divine Head other than Christ, so the woman should have no head except her husband; therefore, her natural head should be covered.

St. Paul was not saying that the union of Christ and His Church is like a human marriage, but rather that the human marriage is like the union of Christ and His Church. The realities are eternal; what happens in time is its shadow. For example, earthly fatherhood is a reflection of Heavenly Fatherhood. "Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, that Father from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth takes its title." (Eph. 3:15) Because human marriage is an imperfect reflection of a Divine-human unity, it follows that sex does not enter at all into the analogy. "No more male and female; you are all one person in Christ." (Gal. 3:28) A worm's-eye view of marriage from the pasture or the stable makes it seem as if its substance were sex. A heavenly view makes marriage seem precisely what Paul calls it: "a great mystery."

To the Christian, however, there is added an additional sanction for the perpetual bond of husband and wife to love one another until death do them part. Every true marriage is lasting because God so ordered: "What God, then, has joined, let not man put asunder." (Matt. 19:6) But in the supernatural order of baptized souls, the marriage between Christians recalls the union of Christ and His Church. "Yes, those words are a high mystery, and I am applying them here to Christ and His Church." (Eph. 5:32) As Christ took His human nature not for three years, nor for thirty-three, but for all eternity, so do husband and wife take one another not for a time, but until death do them part. This is the basic reason why the marriage of two baptized persons is absolutely unbreakable, because it is the symbol of the unbreakable union of Christ and His Spouse. As Christ has only one Church for His Spouse, otherwise He would be guilty of spiritual adultery, so a husband may have only one wife, and a wife only one husband. As Christ would never leave His Spouse, so neither may one spouse leave the other.

In the marriage ceremony it is not the exchange of consent by bride and groom which constitutes the symbol of the union of Christ and the Church, but rather the will to make such a union a reality. The Church teaches that the sacrament of matrimony brings married love to its perfection. But this elevation is not due to man's efforts nor to anything human in the Church. The Council of Trent expressly stated: "It is Christ Who by the merit of His Passion has obtained this grace." St. Thomas Aquinas reflects: "Although there is no likeness between marriage and that part of the Passion which is suffering, there is likeness between marriage and that part of the Passion which is love, for Christ suffered for the Church when He became its Spouse." Thus marriage which, in the natural order, is already a unity in love, is here pictured as possessing a deeper unity and love through the merits of Christ dispersed through the Sacrament.

Because Divinely strengthened, marriage takes on a deeper significance. As Christ gives His Body and Blood to the Church, so now the personal physical giving of husband and wife to each other is no longer seen as an act in common with the animals, but as an echo of the Divine. The gift in both instances proceeds from Love. St. Thomas Aquinas suggests that, just as the fulfillment of the marriage of Christ and His Church was reached through the Glorious Ascension, so in the lower order, the fulfillment of the marriage of man and woman is reached in the consummation of the marriage. The ecstatic moment when two are in one flesh is, to the greatest of the world's thinkers, the symbol of Ascension into heaven. Did the young married couple but know it, their description of their happiness as "heavenly" is not far from the Divine Reality it was meant to convey. It is a pity that they ever have to come down to earth, but the shadow must not expect to be as enduring as the Substance, which is Divine.

This same brilliant Aquinas also tells us that a marriage, before it is consummated, represents the union of Christ with the soul through grace. But once the physical union has taken place, then marriage symbolizes the union of Christ and the Church. In the first instance, it is a symbol of the individual nature of man; in the second, his social nature. The spiritual repercussions of this doctrine are considerable. The union of the individual with Christ can be broken by sin; but the union of Christ and His Church is unbreakable and eternal. Canon Law, reflecting this idea, concedes that a marriage ratum non consummatum, or a marriage in which the husband and wife never lived together, is breakable under certain conditions; but the marriage bond of baptized husband and wife which has been consummated is absolutely unbreakable.

Sacred Scripture, in developing this Mystery, never tells wives that they must love their husbands, although husbands are bidden to love their wives. Rather, the wives are to be subject to their husbands. This implies no servility, for there is this parallel: Christ loves the Church, but it is for the Church to submit to Christ. Once again, St. Paul is arguing from the Divine to the Human Nuptials, and not from the Human to the Divine.

SYMBOL

REALITY

Wives must obey their husbands.

As they would obey the Lord.

The man is the head to which the woman's body is united.

Just as Christ is the head of the Church, He, the Savior, on whom the safety of His Body depends.

And women must owe obedience at all points to their husbands.

As the Church does to Christ.

You who are husbands must show love to your wives.

As Christ showed love to the Church when He gave Himself up on its behalf.

And that is how husband ought to love wife, as if she were his own body; in loving his wife, a man is but loving himself.

He (Christ) would hallow it (Church), purify it by bathing it in the water to which His word gave life. He would summon it into His own presence, the Church in all its beauty, no stain, no wrinkle, no such disfigurement: it was to be holy, it was to be spotless.

It is unheard of that a man should bear ill will to his own flesh and blood: No, he keeps it fed and warmed.

And so it is with Christ and His Church; we are limbs of His Body: flesh and blood, we belong to Him.

That is why a man will leave his father and mother and will cling to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.

Yes, these words are a high mystery, and I am applying them here to Christ and His Church.

Meanwhile, each of you is to love his wife as he would love himself, and the wife is to pay reverence to her husband.

Not in these words, but with this idea, the Church asks the bride and groom: "What guarantee will you give that you will love one another until death do you part?" If they say: "We give the pledge of your word," the Church will answer: "Words and pacts can be broken, as the history of our world too well proves." If they say: "We give the pledge of a ring," the Church will again answer: "Rings can be broken and lost, and with them the memory of a promise. Only when you stake your eternal salvation as a guarantee of your fidelity to represent the union of Christ and the Church, will the Church consent to unite you as man and wife." Their lives thus become bonded at the altar, sealed with the seal of the Cross, and signed with the sign of the Eucharist which they both receive into their souls as a pledge of the unity in the Spirit, which is the foundation of their unity in the flesh.

When husband and wife live their married lives as reflections of the Divine Prototype, their relations one with another become a source of merit. They save their souls through union with one another. Sacramental grace is communicated in the marriage act. If the act is nothing more than another form of the copulation of the beasts in the field, then it is bound to sicken with its own "too much," for it leaves out the soul, whose needs have to be satisfied, as well as the body. As a man labors differently when a tyrant stands over him than when he freely creates for his beloved, so husband and wife react differently to their mutual relations when they see them mirroring forth the great truths of their faith.

As each soul in the state of grace is a spouse of Christ, and as that union thrives by love which is the Spirit, so in the external order of the flesh, husband and wife ought to love one another with such abiding and sacrificial affection and mutual helpfulness as to manifest the union of Christ and His Mystical Body, the Church. Man represents the Word made flesh; woman represents humanity, toward which God bends and which is purified and united to Himself in a union so personal that it is forever His Spouse. Woman thus represents the religious vocation of humanity in the face of God. When conjugal love is understood as symbolizing this love of Christ and His Spouse, then the charity that one spouse has for the other will aid their complete spiritual development until Christ be formed in them. The avidity to possess the other in love is superseded by the interest in seeing the other grow in love of God. Everything is done for love.

The great tragedy of life is to go to the limits of love, to become a spent force, to see the elan evaporate and vanish. But this exhaustion is impossible when conjugal love is seen as the means to a deeper love. The partner cannot give the infinity which love demands, but he or she can point the way to it. Then the creature gives what it has not, as it points to love of Christ, Who is now in their midst, to unite the couple more than ever in soul as well as in body. The husband or wife who has never climbed to the love of Christ has never fully understood the mystery of a spouse. As the Encyclical on Marriage expresses it: "This mutual inward moulding of husband and wife, this determined effort to perfect each other, can in a very real sense be said to be the chief reason and purpose of matrimony, provided matrimony be looked at not in the restricted sense as instituted for the proper conception and education of the child, but more widely as the blending of life as a whole and the mutual interchange and sharing thereof."

This beautiful prayer read in the Nuptial Mass summarizes the "Great Mystery":

"O God, who by Thy mighty power didst make all things out of nothing; who having set in order the elements of the universe and made man to God's image, didst appoint woman to be his inseparable helpmate, in such wise that the woman's body took its beginning out of the flesh of man, thereby teaching that what Thou hadst been pleased to institute from one principle might never lawfully be put asunder; O God, Who hast hallowed wedlock by a mystery so excellent that in the marriage bond Thou didst foreshow the union of Christ with the Church; O God, by whom woman is joined to man, and that union which Thou didst ordain from the beginning is endowed with a blessing which alone was not taken away, either by the punishment for original sin or by the sentence of the flood; look in Thy mercy upon this Thy handmaid, who is to be joined in wedlock and entreats protection and strength from Thee. May the yoke of love and of peace be upon her. True and chaste may she wed in Christ; and may she ever follow the pattern of holy women; and may she be dear to her husband like Rachel; wise like Rebecca; long-lived and faithful like Sara. May the author of deceit work none of his evil deeds within her. May she ever be knit to the faith and to the commandments. May she be true to one husband, and fly from forbidden approaches. May she fortify her weakness by strong discipline. May she be grave in demeanor and honored for her modesty. May she be well taught in heavenly lore. May she be fruitful in offspring. May her life be good and sinless. May she win the rest of the blessed and the Kingdom of heaven. May they both see their children's children unto the third and fourth generation, and may they reach the old age which they desire. Through the same Christ, Our Lord.

"May the God of Abraham the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob be with you, and may He fulfill His blessing in you, that you may see your children's children even to the third and fourth generation, and thereafter may you have life everlasting, by the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ; who with the Father and the Holy Ghost liveth and reigneth God for ever and ever. Amen."

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