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If the basis of marriage were sex, then it would be as promiscuous as the mating of beasts. If it is based on love, it is unbreakable. Marriage based on sex alone is like establishing a lifelong association on a love of Ping-Pong. There will come days when we cannot play, other days when we will get tired of playing, and still other days when we would like to play something else, or to play with somebody else. Identification of marriage with the pleasure which marriage brings is a misunderstanding. Then, when the first thrill is gone after a couple of years, it is felt that the bond no longer endures. We say we no longer love one another, when we mean that the exchange of selfish pleasure is no longer satisfying. Remarriage while the true partner is living is a vain attempt to give respectability to dishonor by invoking a human law which overthrows God's law: "And so they are no longer two, they are one flesh; what God, then, has joined, let not man put asunder." (Matt. 19:6) The very fact that a first marriage, born in love, can be broken for a second marriage, desired in love, proves that the most beautiful word in our language has been distorted by the lie of Satan. What is called "love" today is often nothing more than a confused mixture of sentimental pathos, disguised egotism, Freudian complexes, frustrated living, and weakness of character.
The basis of unity is the fact that in this bond two persons are joined together so as to become "one flesh." This inviolable bond, according to Our Divine Savior, excludes not only desiring another partner but also entering into another union while the partner lives. Our Lord even forbade unlawful desires: "But I tell you that he who casts his eyes on a woman so as to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart." (Matt. 5:28) These words cannot be annulled even by consent of one of the partners, for they express a law of God and nature which no one can break. He directly forbade any remarriage while one bond endured. Even though there might be a legitimate reason for the partners separating, this would not give either one the right to marry again.
"Then the Pharisees came and put him to the test by asking him, whether it is right for a man to put away his wife. He answered them, What command did Moses give you? And they said, Moses left a man free to put his wife away, if he gave her a writ of separation. Jesus answered them, It was to suit your hard hearts that Moses wrote such a command as that; God, from the first days of creation, made them man and woman. A man, therefore, shall leave his father and mother and will cling to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. Why then, since they are no longer two, but one flesh, what God has joined, let not man put asunder. And when they were in the house, his disciples asked him further about the same question. Whereupon he told them, If a man puts away his wife and marries another, he behaves adulterously towards her; and if a woman puts away her husband and marries another, she is an adulteress." (Mark 10:2-12) St. Paul confirmed Our Lord's words: "For those who have married already, the precept holds which is the Lord's precept, not mine; the wife is not to leave her husband (if she has left him, she must either remain unmarried, or go back to her own husband again), and the husband is not to put away his wife." (1 Cor. 7:10, 11)
This unity of two in one flesh is not just biological, as it is in animals. Rather, it has a spiritual and psychic quality understood by few. Nowhere does Sacred Scripture speak of marriage in terms of sex. Instead, it speaks of it in terms of knowledge. "And now Adam had knowledge of his wife, Eve, and she conceived. She called her child Cain, as if she would say, Cana, I have been enriched by the Lord with a man-child." (Genesis 4:1) And when the Angel Gabriel announced to the Blessed Virgin that she was chosen to be the mother of God, Mary asked: "How can that be, since I have no knowledge of man?" (Luke 1:35) There was no question here of ignorance of conception but of some deeper mystery. Marriage is here related to knowledge. The closest union that exists between anything in the universe and man himself is through knowledge. When the mind knows flower and tree, man possesses these objects within his intellect. They are not identified with his intellect, but are distinct from it. These objects exist inside the mind in a new manner of being. Philosophy speaks of man, for example, not only as really and physically existing in his natural being, or esse naturali, but also as perceptually and mentally repeated in consciousness, or as existing in esse intentionali. An object outside the mind thus exists inside the mind as well and without ceasing to be itself. This union of the object and the mind, or the thing known and the knower, is one of the closest unions possible in the natural order. In the psychological order, this unity is akin to sympathy, by which one enters into another's anxiety because, in some way, his anxiety has entered into the other.
Sacred Scripture speaks of marriage as knowledge, because it represents a union much more profound and lasting, much more bound up with our psychic structure, than the mere biological unity that comes from the mating of animals. Marriage involves a soul, a mind, a heart, and a will as much as it involves reproductive organs. Because the union of man and woman is something more than a union of diverse biological functions, it has repercussions on the mind which are totally absent in the animal order. The union, therefore, may be described as psychosomatic, in the sense that it affects the whole person, body and soul, and not merely the lower part alone.
Because marriage is knowledge, it follows that its unity is one which demands fidelity. Suppose a student never knew, until he entered college, the soliloquy of Hamlet. Once he had come to know that, which he never knew before, he would always be dependent on the college which had given him that knowledge. That is why he calls that college his "beloved mother," his Alma Mater. It caused something to happen to him which was unique. He could go on enjoying the soliloquy all the days of his life, but he could never re-acquire it. So, too, when man and woman come to the knowledge of another person, when they, as rational creatures, establish a unity in the flesh which before they never knew; they can go on enjoying that knowledge, but they never can re-acquire it. So long as time endures, he gave to her the knowledge of man, and she gave to him the knowledge of woman. And they gave knowledge because they gave unity, not of object and mind, but of flesh and flesh. Others can repeat the knowledge, even unlawfully, but there was always some one who was the first to unfold the mystery of life.
Thus, the union between husband and wife is not an experience that may be forgotten. It is a knowledge or an identity that has permanence about it. They are "two in one flesh." From this point of view, there is nothing that happens to a woman that does not happen to man; the accidents of the union are only a symbol of a real change that has occurred in both. Neither can live again as if nothing had ever happened. There is a kind of ontological bond established between the two which is related, though not in the same order, as the bond between a mother and her child. By the very nature of things, only one person can bring this knowledge to another. This already suggests a union that is more personal than carnal. No one minds eating in public, because there is not a personal union of the food and the stomach. But making love in public is vulgar because, by its very nature, it is personal. It exists between two persons, and only two, and therefore resents intrusion or vulgarity. Their love is spoiled when others know it, and so marriage is spoiled when a third knows its secret. As the mind and its object are made one in knowledge, so man and woman are made one in flesh, even outside matrimony, as St. Paul suggests: "Or did you never hear that the man who unites himself to a harlot becomes one body with her?" (1 Cor. 6:16)
The unification from the duality of flesh of husband and wife is one of the reasons why the Savior forbade the breaking of the bond. Both men and women, in the moment of the knowing, receive a gift which neither ever knew before, and which they can never know again except by repetition. The resulting psychic changes are as great as the somatic. The woman can never return again to virginity; the man can never return again to ignorance. Something has happened to make them one, and from that oneness comes fidelity, so long as either has a body.
The second quality of faithfulness is charity, in the sense that husband and wife love one another not with adulterous love, where there is a giving of a body without a soul, but as Christ loves the Church. Here marriage is revealed not only as the symbol of knowledge, but as the symbol of His marriage with the Church, which is His Spouse. Hence St. Paul enjoins: "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." (Ephesians 5:25) The Encyclical of Pius XI on marriage explains the effect of this symbolism:
"The love, then, of which We are speaking is not that based on the passing lust of the moment nor does it consist in pleasing words only, but in the deep attachment of the heart which is expressed in action, since love is proved by deeds. This outward expression of love in the home demands not only mutual help but must go further; it must have as its primary purpose that man and wife help each other day by day in forming and perfecting themselves in the interior life, so that through their partnership in life they may advance ever more and more in virtue, and above all that they may grow in true love towards God and their neighbor, on which indeed "dependeth the whole Law and the Prophets." For all men of every condition, in whatever honorable walk of life they may be, can and ought to imitate that most perfect example of holiness placed before man by God, namely, Christ Our Lord, and by God's grace to arrive at the summit of perfection, as is proved by the example set us of many saints."
The great advantage of the vow, which binds until death, is that it guards the couple against allowing the moods of time to override reason, and thus protects the general interests from canceling the particular. There is no other way to control capricious solicitation except by a vow. It may be hard to keep, but it is worth keeping because of what it does to exalt the characters of those who make it. Once its inviolable character is recognized before God, an impulse is given to self-examination, the probing of one's faults and new efforts at charity. It is too terrible to contemplate what would happen to the world if our pledged words were no longer bonds. No nation could extend credit to another nation if the compact of repayment was signed with reservations. International order vanishes as domestic society perishes through the breaking of vows. To say, two years after marriage: "I gave my oath at the altar, yes, but since I am in love with someone else, God would not want me to keep my oath," is like saying: "I promised not to steal my neighbor's chickens, but since I fell in love with that handsome Plymouth Rock, God would not want me to keep my promise." Once we decide, in any matter, that passion takes precedence over truth, and erotic impulse over honor, then how shall we prevent the stealing of anything, once it becomes "vital" to someone else? As Chesterton put it:
"Numbers of normal people are getting married, thinking already that they may be divorced. The sincere and innocent Victorian would never have married a woman reflecting that he could divorce her. He would as soon have married a woman reflecting that he could murder her. The psychological substance of the whole thing has altered; the marble has turned to ice, and the ice has melted with most amazing rapidity. The Church was right to refuse even the exception. The world has admitted that exception, and the exception became the rule.... They ought surely to know that the foe now on the frontiers offers no terms of compromise; but threatens a complete destruction. And they have sold the pass."
When fidelity to spouse is the echo of the fidelity of Christ and His Church, then the couple is bound together not in a collective egotism, but in true charity. As Our Lord loves His Church and the Church loves Him, so married love is not an exchange of services but a living fellowship. Each takes all the other has or is, and uses it for the benefit of the other and for the love of God. Fidelity is related to obedience, and obedience implies order. Nothing is so much inclined to provoke the unthinking as the assertion that there is a hierarchy in love. This order includes the primacy of the husband in regard to the wife and children, and the obedience of the wife and children to the husband. Such is the Divine Command: "Let women be subject to their husbands." Those who have no understanding of function regard this order in love as the servile subjection of the wife to the husband, which it is not.
The relation between husband and wife is the relation, again, of Christ and the Church. "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." (Ephesians 5:22, 23) As Christ does not deprive His Church of liberty, but gives to all the members of His Body the "glorious liberty of the children of God," so neither does the primacy of the husband take away any freedom that belongs to the dignity of a human person. It does not imply a servile obedience to the husband's wishes if contrary either to right reason or the dignity of the wife, nor does it place the wife on the level of the children, for children are subject to both father and mother. But the order of love does forbid to the wife a license which would destroy the good of the family.
In the words of the Papal Encyclical on marriage: "It forbids that in this body which is the family, the heart be separated from the head to the detriment of the whole body. . . . For if the man is the head, the woman is the heart, and as he occupies the chief place in ruling, so she may and ought to claim for herself the chief place in love." If the husband should be recreant in his duty, then the double empire of ruling and loving would fall to the wife. In no sense then is the wife the servant, but rather the companion of man, their relations always being governed by Divine Charity "both in him who rules and in her who obeys, since each bears the image, the one of Christ, the other of the Church." The notions of despotism, tyranny on the part of the husband, and a sense of inferiority and subjection on the wife's, vanish when the relationship is seen as modeled upon the union of Christ and His Spouse the Church. Christian perfection, which consists in the self-donation of the soul to Christ, finds its symbol in the ordering of wife to husband, from which the husband learns the necessary indigence of the creature in the face of the Creator.
St. Peter, developing this theme, wrote: "You, too, who are wives must be submissive to your husbands. Some of these still refuse credence to the word; it is for their wives to win them over, not by word but by example; by the modesty and reverence they observe in your demeanour." (Peter 3:1, 2)
The mission of the woman is a reflection of the mission of Mary, who defined herself as "the handmaid of the Lord." Mary renders captive the heart of man to deliver him over to her Divine Son. The woman who rules by love manifests this dependence on her husband, so that the flesh might tell, in feeble babblings, what the Spirit speaketh in the Word. This is the hidden meaning of the words of St. Paul: "The man is the head to which the woman's body is united, just as Christ is the head of the Church." (Ephesians 5:23) The woman by nature seeks to found her love on another; but, lest the husband should trample on that which is confided and even surrendered to him, he must in turn be subject to Christ. As, in the spiritual order, Christ, the God-man, came to us through a woman, Mary, the new Eve; so souls return to God through the woman, Mary, the Mediator's grace. In the dimension of flesh, this order is suggested in a woman saying to a man: "Be it done to me according to thy Word," and the man saying to God: "All things that are pleasing to Him, that I do." But since the two are in one flesh, they go to God, not in tandem fashion, but together. As Christ is one body with His Church, so husband and wife are one flesh. Since "it is unheard of, that a man should bear ill-will to his own flesh and blood" (Ephesians 5:29), the symbolic primacy of the husband in ruling will never be detached from the primacy of love, where the woman is queen.
The woman is man's sister-soul. Her man is hers; she is his. From this, it follows: "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." (Ephesians 5:28) Man loves because he needs to love, and woman loves because she sees that she is needed. Mutual need does not have to be equal need; the need will differ with function and with nature. In a certain sense, there is no equality in love; the lover always sees the beloved as "way up there" on a pedestal, transcendent to others and beyond comparison. The beloved always sees the lover as "without an equal."
This sense of inequality is seen in its brighter light in communion, when the soul says to God: "O Lord, I am not worthy." All love is humble. But when love leaves, equality in the strict sense takes its place. In the happy home there is no such thing as saying: "This is my chair; this is yours." But when love leaves, then comes the lawyer, the division of property, and an equality which kills all love. Genuine love excludes all servility but includes a surrender to the other of the peculiar advantages of each.
The emptiness of one calls for the fullness of the other. The relation of husband and wife is not to be understood in a mathematical or naturalistic sense, which would degenerate into whether a feminine intellect has more power than a masculine intellect. Such narrow rules assume the primacy of sex, and not the bond of love, which is really the heart of the matter. From this point of view, the man is not an overlord but a companion who labors for the happy response of his spouse. Each seeks to dignify self, not by possessing the other in lust but winning the other by honor and sanctification. "Each of you must learn to control his own body, as something holy and held in honor, not yielding to the promptings of passion, as the heathen do in their ignorance of God." (1 Thes. 4:4, 5)
Fidelity in marriage implies much more than abstention from adultery. All religious ideals are positive, not negative. Husband and wife are pledges of eternal love. Their union in the flesh has a grace which prepares and qualifies both souls for the union with God. Salvation is nothing but wedlock with God. All those who have taken hold of Christ in marriage wear a "yoke that is sweet and a burden that is light." As yoke-mates of love, they pull together in the tilling of the field of the flesh, until there is finally revealed to them the full splendor of harvest in eternal union with God. Marital fidelity is not something added to love; it is the form and expression of that love. It is not a giving way to the domination of the other party, for love is not a fusion but a communion. Marriage brings into play not two biological functions, but two personalities. The dialogue is of the spirit; the kiss is that of the souls; to intensify that spirit and echo the flesh itself has its echo. Even their word is made flesh. The momentary harmony can be spoiled by one false note. But the total surrender in love, revealing the union of Christ and His Bride the Church, never is interrupted and never wears out. When all else fails in the world, God is still left. When in the lower order all else is gone, there is one who symbolizes Christ in the Church, on whom one can always rely, always trust.
The passing of time wears out bodies, but nothing can make a soul vanish or can diminish its eternal value. Nothing on earth is stronger than the fidelity of a heart fortified by the Sacrament, which becomes like the unshakable columns of the Roman Forum against which the ravages of time are powerless. Pleasure is the play of the now-moment. Fidelity is an engagement with the future. When the future is eternity, and when the soul knows that it cannot be saved unless it is faithful to the spouse, it remains faithful even when faced with infidelity. As God's love is never withdrawn, so the fleshy counterpart of that love is also incorruptible in its unity. He who changes love would also change the love of Christ and His Church. The indifferent or "broadminded," in the false sense of the term, who deny Truth in the order of knowledge, are like the promiscuous and the unfaithful in the order of love. Fidelity is strength, for it is unity in plurality. Such fidelity is not discovered; it is made. It is not automatic in marriage but requires renewed efforts at mutual understanding, in order that there may finally result an alliance of mind and soul and destiny.
Union in the flesh can cement this accord of the spirit, and for that reason St. Paul forbids a separation of husband and wife to the point where fidelity might be endangered. "Do not starve one another, unless perhaps you do so for a time, by mutual consent, to have more freedom for prayer; come together again, or Satan will tempt you, weak as you are." (1 Cor. 7:5) Those wholly absorbed by their own emotions or their selfishness make themselves impervious to others. They even become a mystery to others, for emotions are incommunicable. No one can communicate a toothache, but love is communicable. The interior world of the other, in true love, is pierced by the body and soul. If the body alone is used, then the other soon becomes a weaker and weaker echo of its own egotism.
Everyone believes in the eternity of love, and eternal love is found only in God. To just the extent that the sparks of earthly love are stolen from the great heart and hearth of God, does earthly love remain abiding. They who possess this fides every now and then are cast into the ecstasy of love and are lifted to a higher dimension of ravishing affection, but knowing its Source and Origin, they whisper to themselves in sweet anticipation of heaven: "If the spark is so great, oh, what must be the flame!"
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