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Statements | Sunday, March 26, 2017

We need the witness of married couples in our parishes

Archbishop Thomas Wenski's Key Note address at the 2017 Marriage Summit

Archbishop Thomas Wenski's Key Note address at the 2017 Marriage Summit held at St. John Vianney College Seminary. Sunday, March 26, 2017. 

Marriage is difficult; marriage is hard. Sometimes, we, priests, think that because we are celibate, we make a big sacrifice. But we can learn much from married people, precisely because of your sacrifices. And what sacrifices you make – think of the children, the problems that arise, of the fears, suffering, illnesses, rebellion, the problems of the early years when nights are almost always spent sleeplessly because of the crying of the small children. We all (not just us priests but all of us, especially your children and grandchildren) we all certainly can learn much from you about the meaning of sacrifice and suffering.

We need the witness of married couples in our parishes. We need to learn that it is beautiful to mature through sacrifices – and thus to work for the salvation of others. And that is precisely why marriage is a sacrament – an encounter with Christ that gives grace that leads to salvation not only for oneself but for others. We are all called to holiness – and husband and wife are called to help each other become holy. Marriage is a sacrament for the salvation of others – first of all for the salvation of the other – of the husband and of the wife – but then of the children, the sons and daughters, but also of the entire community.

Deus Caritas Est.  God is Love.  That God is love is the fundamental truth that the gospel proclaims to the entire world.  It is the heart of the “good news” of salvation. We were created in the image and likeness of this God who is love. Understanding that we are made in the image and likeness of God can help us to understand why God put into the humanity of man and woman the vocation – and thus the capacity and the responsibility – of love and communion.

The vocation to a common life lived in the Lord; that is, within the holy bonds of Sacramental Marriage, is a witness to the fact that God does love his people. A couple’s coming together “in one flesh” in a relationship of mutual and exclusive fidelity “until death do you part” is an image and symbol of the new and eternal covenant that unites God and his people. As a sacrament, Matrimony is a living and outward sign of Christ’s own love for his bride, the Church.

Your unconditional love one for another, the mutual and exclusive fidelity of your love for one another, your love’s openness to life expressed through its fruits – your children and your good works – reflect the love of Christ himself. He loves us to the end with a love that is unconditional, faithful and, through the gifts of his Spirit poured into our lives, fruitful.  Yes, by your love for each other – in sickness and in health, for better or for worse – you give a living witness that God is Love, Deus Caritas Est.

This witness is sorely needed today when so many people – and society itself –are confused about the meaning of marriage and family.  According to statistics reported in our newspapers, less than half of the households in the United States today are made up of married couples. For the first time in history, there are more people not married – we put in this category: those never married, not yet married and not married anymore – there are more in this category than those who are married. This is a serious problem that begets a litany of woes, and I know that it touches you as you look with concern on your children and your grandchildren.

Today, we talk a lot in the Church about the lack of vocations to the priesthood and religious life. But this crisis is not just about celibacy – as it is sometimes seen. Young people do find it hard not only to commit to the vocation of being a priest, or a sister; but they find it hard also to commit to the vocation of being a husband and wife, a father and a mother. We see this in the number of young people who are reluctant not only to marry in church – but even civilly.   A few years ago, a movie described this phenomenon, I think it was called:  “Failure to launch”.

Perhaps, our young people are afraid – afraid of failure – and so they do not launch into the adventure of marriage and family. And certainly today we see so many failed marriages. Perhaps, they are afraid of the finality of it all: to definitively commit oneself to another till “death do you part” can seem so daunting and so limiting. Sometimes marriage is described as “the old ball and chain” – commitment seems to be against one’s personal freedom.

So, today, more than ever, we need those of you who did launch into marriage to give a witness about the true “facts of life”, about the ultimate meaning and truth of conjugal life.  We need to see in you  the beauty of marriage, the depth and beauty of love brought to full maturity, a mature love that knows true freedom because it is committed, a love tried and purified in the crucible of suffering and sacrifice.

The years you share together – and certainly no one can pretend that they were always be easy or that there will be no difficult days ahead – but these years have given you experience – but more than experience, they have given you wisdom.  You must share that wisdom if young people today are to discover the beauty of the vocation to love.

As the Pope Benedict XVI pointed out in his first encyclical entitled Deus Caritas Est, the word “love” is frequently used and misused. Most commonly, it represents what the ancient Greeks called “Eros”; that is, the erotic love between a man and a woman. But the Church, from her earliest days, proposed a new vision of self-sacrificial love expressed in the word “agape”. The natural human love between a man and a woman is a beautiful and sacred thing but it needs discipline and maturity, it needs ‘agape’ if it is to attain its true dignity and purpose.

Our modern society certainly has exalted “Eros” but at the same time it has also debased the human body and in doing so has impoverished Eros. Eros, reduced to just ‘sex”, has become a commodity – a mere ‘thing’ to be bought and sold. The lack of modesty, our complacency with the ‘soft porn’ that has invaded our popular culture, is not a sign of our society’s “being at ease” with the body – as opposed to an older generation’s supposed prudish up-tightness. Rather, it is a sign of our society’s contempt for the human body. Men and women today consider their bodies and their sexuality are purely material – somehow outside of themselves as if they were “extra baggage or an external shell” and thus to be able to be used and exploited at will.

Eros properly understood, however, does symbolize God’s passionate love for his people – and this Eros that attracts the opposite sexes to one another “leads a man and a woman to marriage, to a bond that is exclusive and therefore monogamous as well as permanent”. This is exactly what Jesus affirms, when quoting the Book of Genesis, he says: “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate.” (Matthew 19: 5-6)

A balance, between the ecstasy of “Eros” and the unselfish love of agape, needs to be reestablished if today’s men and women are to respond faithfully to their vocation to love. Of course, a distorted notion of Eros is not a just a product of our modern times. Although man’s vocation is to love, our capacity for love was wounded since that original sin of Adam and Eve. Because of that wound, we find the responsibilities of love very challenging, if not impossible. Even the apostles, when Jesus affirmed the indissolubility of marriage, complained: “If that is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” (Matthew 19: 10) 

As the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council reminded us, man can only realize himself through the sincere gift of himself. The “Theology of the Body” developed by Pope John Paul II  speaks of "nuptial meaning” of the body for the human body, constituted male or female, reveals man and woman's call to become a gift for one another, a gift fully realized in their "one flesh" union. The body also has a "generative meaning" that (God willing) brings a "third" into the world through their communion. In this way, marriage constitutes a "primordial sacrament" understood as a sign that truly communicates the mystery of God's Trinitarian life and love to husband and wife - and through them to their children, and through the family to the whole world.

Today, of course, the hopes that people place in marriage are increasingly fragile in our age of easy divorce. And with the redefinition of marriage in civil law people are eve more confused as to what marriage is. Rather than see the institution of marriage as expressive of the complementarity of sexual difference between a man and a woman, ordered for the raising of children, the proponents of so-called same sex marriage have now redefined marriage for all as existing solely for the gratification of two (and why just two?) consenting adults. The state, in historically recognizing the traditional understanding of the institution of marriage as a union of one man and one woman, did so to encourage and support, as social policy, heterosexual marriages because such marriages best provide the optimal conditions for the raising of future generations of its citizens. And all honest social research as well as anecdotal evidence shows that children are “hard-wired” to be best raised by a mother and father who are married to each other in a low conflict relationship.

To state this fact is in no way to wish to disparage those parents and often grandparents who at great sacrifice raise children in alternative situations. They need and deserve our support. But, for millennia, marriage between one man and one woman has been promoting what the social scientists call “kin altruism”; in other words, it’s about what’s best for children. Only in the marriage of a man and a woman can “two become one flesh” (cf. Genesis 2: 24) and thus create a conjugal society – or family – which provides that the individuals who give life to children should be the ones to raise them in a bonded and enduring relationship.

Too many people, especially among our young, are cynical about the possibilities of entering into a joyful and permanent marriage. With the help of God’s grace, however, the commitment of a man and woman to love one another can endure - through the trials and tests of time – until death do they part.  The key to regaining such a balance is found in a personal relationship with God and an understanding of the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ.

And this is what makes the Sacrament of Matrimony different from cohabitation or even a civil marriage.  As a sacrament, Matrimony is a living and outward sign of Christ’s own love for his bride, the Church. In imitation of Christ, through their unconditional love one for another, the mutual and exclusive fidelity of their love for one another, their love’s openness to life expressed through its fruits – their children and their good works – husbands and wives reflect the love of Christ himself. “Agape” redeems “Eros”

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