The Christian Vocations (Part Two)

This is the second post of a series of three. Click the following for parts One, and Three.

In our last post, I tried to focus more on celibacy, this week I’d like to fcous more on marriage in both West’s article and what we can expect to learn from the Holy Father Pope John Paul II.

In a different way, marriage also anticipates heaven. “In the joys of their love [God gives spouses] here on earth a foretaste of the wedding feast of the Lamb” (CCC, n. 1642). Why, then, do so many couples experience marriage as a “living hell”? In order for marriage to bring the happiness it’s meant to, spouses must live it as God intended “from the beginning.” This means they must contend diligently with the effects of sin.

This is what West has to say, and I’m lifting it directly, because I like it so much and I could not reproduce something as concise and precise if I tried.

Marriage is a war on sin. As is all Christian life. My professor Dr. Green taught us that as charismatics especially we have to recognize the value of “the mundane” in spiritual warfare and that to live the Christian life is spiritual warfare.

For those of you who have no clue what I’m talking about, let me give you a history lesson from my protestant upbringing.

Spiritual warfare in the tradition I converted into Christianity in, was a specifically charismatic bodily act of intense and vigorous prayers in tongues and doing battle with mostly imaginary foes. In this view, spiritual warfare was something one engaged in periodically, and it was for the sake of individual victory. What Dr. Green taught me, was that spiritual warfare is much bigger than myself and that spiritual warfare should always sacramentally point to the advent of Christ in our present reality.

In other words, as I mentioned above, to live Christianly is to do war with the devil. We see this in the temptation narratives. Christ needs not do anything but carry on in His mission faithfully. The temptations are distractions from the mission He is already on. Yet, to live this life, with singular focus on God is precisely what the gospels desire from us, for it is in this manner of living that we do war on sin.

That’s what’s really at stake in a proper Theology of the Body, seeing our bodies and our sexuality as eschatological manifestations of the advent of Christ in the world. If we’re to avoid the common conception of marriage as the worst possible thing ever, or a “living hell” as West puts it, we have to reshape what marriage is and speaks to us if we’re going to understand it rightly as a blessing and not a curse. Marriage must contend with sin through the acts of matrimony and the married life itself.

This means that marriage is a militant, yet, ordinary and beautiful thing. Marriage is militant precisely by rightly establishing the freedom for love between persons if they engage the discipline of marriage rightly. The Christian wages war on the devil precisely by being free in Christ, and especially by living the ordinary life, the life of simple holiness, this is what is well pleasing to God. The freedom for love established in marriages has all the power to overthrow the world when it’s met as a discipline to be grown in.

Do not let that pass you by:

I said that marriage is a discipline. It is not just a friendship with legalized sex, it is not a contract between two persons, nor is it solely grounded in love, it is a discipline, and as such has strictures and requirements and outcomes. As Pope Benedict XVI says “The cross reminds us that there is no true love without suffering, there is no gift of life without pain“(I know this is a Pope John Paul II blog, but it applied, so thanks for understanding). Marriage is a discipline of the cross, but it is a joyous cross as is celibacy for the Kingdom.

I do feel that this short introduction does not speak enough for asceticism, but it is merely a brief survey, and we’ll get to more of what the Holy Father says presently.

Both Marriage and celibacy are for the Kingdom, and they both further the gift of life, through the sufferings inherent in both ways, and the gift of life that both bring through their diverse, but redemptively directed pains. Marriage is a manifestation of true love when done appropriately, and as such must suffer, the concerns and burdens of neighbor, spouse and children, yet these concerns too are a manifestation of the cross and advent of Christ Himself.

Celibacy too faces unique pains and challenges that help Christ’s gift of life come into the world. The fraternity or sorority in celibate life draws the wider Church into an awareness of the future fulfillment, yet there are pains for celibates. The renunciation of possession, the vow to remain untouched until the day of Christ, and the vow to remain chaste in body and mind present a unique set of challenges that bless the church as well. Both of these however are bound to their ultimate nuptial meaning, specifically that meaning which is borne in Christ, and for Him and through Him.

Matrimony is bound to male and female for as such He created them and to this the bodies of men and women obviously conform and testify. The nuptial meaning of the body is not merely a philosophical extrapolation, but a fact of life. The outcome of marriage is the conforming of two persons to Christ in the Spirit of Him Who fills them with Himself. Further, this conforming reaffirms the original purpose of marriage not as companionship, but as the procreative furthering of the gospel through a physical manifestation of the Triune love.

And here’s a segway into a personal observation:

Marriages have the freedom and responsibility to contend with sin. I cannot even begin to express how many of my married friends have told me that they noticed a lot of their selfishness and other sins once they have become married. Marriage is not only about these personal sins, though they are obviously important. It has a political dimension as well. When we come to this section in the actual lectures I plan to say much more, but for now let’s begin to open up a way in which marriages might be a politics all their own.

Hospitality.

The Christian emphasis on hospitality is supposed to find embodiment not only in the houses of worship that grant asylum to the weak and weary, but in the homes and lives of married couples who work to make available resources or hospitality for the poor in various ways, concerning themselves with a proper and rightly ordered ministry to the weak, the weary and those in need according to the command of Christ.

Hospitality is the Christian vocation across the board, to love enemies, pray for the sick and the weary, the infirm and the injured, to visit in prison those who are innocent and guilty, marriage is called to all these things as well. Not only as non-sacramental good works, but as politically charged acts that publicly speak the Truth about the Catholic beliefs about marriage: namely that it preserves, sustains and renews cultures and continues the works of Christ in the world. If we wish to make an impact in the way in which we impress the sanctity and validity of marriage, it will be less through political showboating and more through the visible charity of the marriages we so strongly wish to defend.

We’ll continue the discussion next week.

Thanks for reading.