[Three to get Married] [Previous]
Modern psychology speaks much of "sublimation," or the finding of outlets in a lower realm for certain basic urges and instincts. Sublimation indeed has its place particularly in resisting temptation. As J. A. Hadfield has said: "Temptation is the voice of repressed evil; conscience is the voice of repressed good." One must therefore look to the positive side of love and its true nature. Marriage is not a sublimation of the sex instinct; it is the consecration of Divine Love. All love is an initiation into the Eternal, the reflection of the Divine in the human. Those who have entered into it and not understood how it prolongs the Incarnation, or the union of the Divine and the human, have a suffering like to the moment of Our Lord on the Cross, when He spoke the fourth Word of Abandonment. The Eros, through a Transfiguration, should lead to the Agape, but those who know not Christ are harassed by an infinite nostalgia for something beyond what they have. Earth and heaven, love and God, were not meant to be in a state of suspension and irreconcilability. But to redeem those who feel abandoned by the love they wanted, and frustrated by the love they possess, Our Lord had to suffer to show them that the Cross alone with its Transfiguration can tie the two extremes together.
It is so easy to describe the modern concept of married love based on sex because, being carnal and having its own specific instruments, it can be analyzed by the Freuds, reported on by the Kinseys, and statistized by Metropolitan Life. But once a spiritual principle is introduced, then marriage becomes much more difficult to describe. A man is easy to describe if he has only the material components of a matchstick, but it requires more wisdom to define him if he has human freedom and infinite aspirations. If love is mere animal-mating, then any physiologist is its master; if it be a spark from the Divine Flame, then one must pray in order to understand its mystery.
The essence of married love is not sex, but consent; not animality, but freedom; not a libido, but a choice. If marriage is a love of "the opposite sex," it is selfishness disguised as love. If marriage is love of a person, it is eternity in the garments of time. The instinctive hatred of a woman for a man who violated her comes because he destroyed her freedom. She was forced to that which should have been her own election. The reason a man scorns a woman who "throws herself" at him is that she spoils by her overtures his right to choose. Freedom is the condition of all love, and not mere physical attraction. The latter is far wider than love. The free choice of another person, against the idea of attraction for one of the opposite sex, is the difference between a true marriage and an unhappy one. But because freedom is the mark of the Spirit which comes from God, a marriage based on consent partakes of Divinity at its very beginning. More than that, it proves that he who freely chooses is also ready for sacrifice. Every consent is not only an affirmation of freedom, but also a restriction of all that would destroy the original choice. The man who chooses the woman, and the woman who accepts, both reject any attachment to others of the opposite sex. Sex becomes personalized, and therefore human and Divine. As Frederick Ozanam in his History of Civilization in the Fifth Century wrote:
"Marriage is something greater than a contract, for it involves also a sacrifice. The woman sacrifices an irreparable gift, which was the gift of God and was the object of her mother's anxious care: her fresh young beauty, frequently her health, and that faculty of loving which women have but once. The man, in his turn, sacrifices the liberty of his youth, those incomparable years which never return, the power of devoting himself to her whom he loves, which is vigorous only in his early years, and the ambition--inspired by love--to create a happy and glorious future. All this is possible but once in a man's life--perhaps never. Therefore Christian marriage is a double oblation, offered in two chalices, one filled with virtue, purity, and innocence; the other with unblemished self-devotion, the immortal consecration of a man to her who is weaker than himself, who was unknown to him yesterday, and with whom today he is content to spend the remainder of his life. These two cups must be both filled to the brim in order that the union may be holy and that Heaven may bless it."
Every person carries within his heart a kind of blueprint of what he loves. Plato may not have been far wrong when he described knowledge as a memory. The blueprint or the ideal is not a memory from another life, but is, rather, made up of the millions of thoughts, actions, and desires which have fused together in the making of character. One hears a melody for the first time and loves it; that is because that kind of music was already within the heart. So it is with love! A person is met and suddenly one "falls in love." May it not be that the particular person is the incarnation of an ideal? "The Word became Flesh." The ideal became personal. What was dreamed became historical and real. As a French author put it: "To know a woman at the hour of desire, one must first respect her at the exquisite hour of dream." Love then is an act of faith; a declaration of the unseen as the real.
If ideals are not high, if the blueprints of love are not beautiful, then the marriage itself will not be beautiful. As some minds can listen to the barbaric tom-toms of anti-music, so there are hearts that can be satisfied with a body without a soul. Hence the need of a moral preparation for marriage. St. Francis de Sales once said that: "In marriage, one takes a vow. But it is the only instance where a vow is taken without a novitiate. If it had a year of novitiate, how few would enter into it." The novitiate of marriage must necessarily embrace two elements: the spiritualization of personal lives, in order that the sublime architectural blueprint of life's partner be formed within; and a constant prayer that God Himself will dispose historical conditions to make the dreams come true.
With marriage and its ripening with the fruit of love, there will dawn a new understanding that everyone carries with him a blueprint of the one he loves, and that One is God. The other partner then is seen as the Lord's John the Baptist, preparing the way and making straight His paths. God was just half-seen through the flesh, but thanks to life's companionship, one becomes more and more attuned to the Divine Fork that gave the original melody on the wedding day!
Love which began as Passion, then became an Act, and now in the autumn of life becomes once again a Desire born of Memory; the new "passionless passion" strains at the leash of life to be one with Life, and Truth, and Love. The words of Our Lord now repeatedly come to their minds: "Those who are found worthy to attain that other world, and resurrection from the dead, take neither wife nor husband." (Luke 20:35) That means that sex, which reflected the animal kingdom, will not exist in eternity, but love, which is a reflection of God's unbodied essence, will remain their eternal ecstasy! There will be no faith in Heaven, for we will already see; there will be no hope in Heaven, for we will already possess; but there will always be love. God is Love!
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