MARRIAGE AS A PATH TO HAPPINESS II | KAIROS GLOBAL | DECEMBER 2019

Author : Fr Charbel

Intro: Fr Charbel continues his catechesis on the sacrament of marriage, this time looking at conjugal love in its various dimensions.

Love, feelings and choice

What is love?

By love we often mean a feeling of attraction – intensely felt and sometimes idealized into romance. You feel that the person you love is your all, and even if the whole world were to crumble down, it would not distract you from him or her. True love is not just this; it is much more than this. Feelings are fleeting, love endures.

The word love is singularly worn out. ‘I love this movie’, ‘I love chocolate’, ‘I love God’, ‘I love my friend’, ‘I love my child’, ‘I love my mother’, the list is endless. What love are we speaking about? We could quote endlessly philosophers, poets, novelists and theologians. But it would boil down to the one question: Do I love for the sake of the one I love, or for my own sake? I do not love sweets for their own sake but for eating them. I love my friend for himself - meaning I search for that which is good for him, as if it were my own good. We see here two great orientations of love, but these take so many different shapes. 

The point is to realize that love is not only about the emotion, or the passion that we feel. Passion and emotion are not bad per se, they are just not enough. It is more deeply about recognizing the goodness of someone, touching somehow the core of the person and choosing that person not as a means for me to reach whatever goal I have set up for myself, but choosing that person for his or her own sake. There is a gift of self in that choice which implies the perception that the one I choose is worthy of that gift. This choice has to be mutual for love to blossom in a relationship – a real sharing which can take the form of friendship, conjugal love, brotherly love, love between parents and children… 

Love is born in many different ways. Sometimes you meet someone for the first time and you are instantly attracted by their charm, beauty, and maybe, even something more. Sometimes appearances are deceptive or this initial attraction reveals itself to be a superficial short-lived infatuation. Other times, after many months or years of acquaintance and indifference, the deepest goodness of someone is discovered as if by surprise. Love does not always mean “falling in love”, but it does always mean coming to a discovery of the goodness of someone and entering into a deeper form of sharing. It is a process, it implies a growth, and it has different rhythms of growth. The old philosopher Aristotle wrote that to call someone a friend, one would need to have eaten a measure of salt with him (i.e. to have shared many meals). Reciprocal love develops as mutual trust, mutual understanding, mutual respect and esteem develop. It demands time, open-mindedness, prudence and personal maturity on both sides. When love or friendship is broken down, it is usually because of a lack of understanding rather than a lack of love.

In marriage

The love between spouses or couples about to get married is very special, because it demands a double choice: they choose each other with their mutual good in view; and they choose to found a family together. This gives to conjugal love its unique perfection but also its unique complexity. Perfection in communion because those who marry choose to share almost everything of their lives and not only this or that aspect of it. Complexity because the begetting of children make them part of a bigger story involving their respective family and the whole of society, material conditions, financial means, cooperation in education and so on and so forth. We find here what the official teaching of the church calls the two ends of marriage which cannot be separated from each other. "The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring” (CCC 1601). The complexities of life often tends to make the communion of love more difficult. Herein lies the need for even greater maturity, respect, mutual trust and understanding than in any other kind of love. Herein lies also the need to make passions and emotions servant of a deeper love, which implies overcoming selfishness in all its different forms.

In the book of Genesis, after their sin, God says to Eve, “your desire will be for your husband and he will dominate over you.” This in a nutshell is the obstacle to genuine conjugal love – the times when love gets corrupted into lust (i.e. self-centered pleasure seeking) and when respectful mutual dependence gets corrupted into an alienating relationship of power dynamics. We could add a third trap into which so many fall – when love grows cold into a kind of indifference. We are all children of Adam and Eve and as such are marked by these selfish tendencies, but we also have the power to overcome them with the help of God’s grace, and the Sacrament of marriage is here a precious gift. In times of struggles, no need to try and travel back in time towards the good old days of first love, or to rekindle the memory of the past choice. The choice of the other in love demands to be renewed each day, and to grow each day. To do one’s best to be faithful to the commitment one took a long time ago is the wrong course of action. The point is to be faithful to the one we love and to choose now. Love needs to be nurtured like a plant, it has its seasons according to which it demands different kinds of care: new forms of sharing, compassion and mutual support in time of suffering, forgiveness etc. All these embody the daily choice to love. Love cannot be static, it is dynamic, alive, like the plant; and we should be like a skilled gardener – patient, perseverant, consistently caring, if we want love to bear the fruit of happiness.

Fr Charbel, originally from France and from the community of St John, is currently living in Pondicherry, India. He goes around preaching retreats and actively supporting youth and young families, especially with marriage issues and discerning vocation. He is currently the Chaplain for JY Tamilnadu.