Love is for Life: Pastoral Letter of the Irish Bishops
PART I God's Plan For Love
(7.) THE COVENANT AND MARRIAGE
32. The rest of the Bible is, in a sense, the story of that great restoration
of mankind which is its redemption by Christ. First that restoration is
promise and expectation. Then it is fulfilment of the promise and accomplishment
of the restoration by Christ, in whom "God wanted all perfection to
be found. .. and all things to be reconciled through him and for him"
(Colossians 1:18-19).
33. All through the Bible, God's relationship with mankind is expressed
in terms of a covenant, a solemn treaty of love and fidelity which God makes
with His people. By this covenant, God pledges Himself irrevocably to love
His people and never to desert them . They in turn are asked to pledge themselves
to a covenant with Him; but no matter how they behave towards God, He will
never change His love for them. Furthermore, this language of the covenant
and the language of marriage are very closely related all through the Bible.
It is as though God could find no language better than the human language
of married love in order to tell human beings about how He loves them. He
loves them with a love which has all the characteristics of married love,
but immeasurably surpasses the most devoted married love. God loves mankind
with a love which is faithful, dependable, unconditional, irrevocable; a
love which is patient and full of pity; a love which is tender yet strong,
passionate but constant; a love which forgives to the point of foolishness
and never ceases to welcome home the unfaithful partner. The prophets, when
they speak of God's covenant-marriage with His people, stress above all
God's fidelity in love in spite of the repeated ingratitude and infidelity
of Israel, His spouse.
34. The Prophet Hosea depicts God's people Israel as an unfaithful, adulterous,
and indeed promiscuous wife. But God, so far from rejecting her, thinks
only of stratagems for enticing her to come back to His love. He pledges
to restore her one day to the blissful delights of Paradise as it was at
the dawn of creation. He promises once more to make Israel's marriage with
God as radiant and joyful as Adam's marriage with Eve before the Fall.
I am going to lure her
and lead her out into the wilderness
and speak to her heart...
There she will respond to me
as she did when she was young... (Hosea 2:16-17).
I will betroth you to myself in faithfulness
and you will come to know the Lord (Hosea 2:21-2).
35. Jeremiah too describes God's love for His people in terms of married
love. This begins with the beauty and joy of young first love.
I remember the affection of your youth,
the love of your bridal days.
You followed me through the wilderness,
through a land unsown. (Jeremiah 2:2)
But soon this idyll becomes a broken dream. The story of Israel becomes
an unending tale of infidelities and of the disasters resulting from them.
But God's only thought is to win back Israel's love and to rebuild the marriage
with His people.
I have loved you with an everlasting love,
so I am constant in my affection for you.
I build you once more,
you shall be rebuilt, virgin of Israel. (Jeremiah 31:3)
36. Ezekiel describes Israel's infidelity to God in terms of marriage
betrayed and defiled by adultery and debauchery. But God's only response
is to shame Israel into repentance by His forgiveness and tenderness and
by the renewal of the marriage covenant with her. (Ezekiel 16)
37. Isaiah in his turn describes the tender pity of God for His fickle and
deceiving bride.
Do not be afraid, you will not be put to shame;
do not be dismayed, you will not be disgraced;
for you will forget the shame of your youth...
For now your creator will be your husband...
Does a man cast off the wife of his youth?
says your God.
I did forsake you for a brief moment,
but with great love will I take you back...
With everlasting love I have taken pity on you,
says the Lord, your redeemer...
For the mountains may depart,
the hills be shaken,
but my love for you will never leave you,
and my covenant of peace with you will never be shaken,
says the Lord, who takes pity on you. (Isaiah 54:4-10)
38. Through the Prophets, then, God reveals to us the nature of His covenant-love
for men, by describing it in terms of human married love. At the same time,
the revelation of God's covenant with His people ennobled the understanding
of human marriage. The lesson of the prophets is that the divine covenant-marriage,
on which human marriage is based, is irrevocable, no matter what human fickleness
and infidelity it encounters. God promises to make a new covenant with men
in the future, in which all the tragedies of the broken covenant will be
abolished, and the blessed peace of the original covenant, the joyful innocence
of the original creation, will be restored.
39. The Old Testament has many beautiful stories of marriage, all of them
stressing that blend of steadfastness and tenderness which should characterise
married love, as it characterises God's love for His people. Such are the
espousals and marriage of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac and Rebekah, of Jacob
and Rachel. The Book of Ruth describes, with touching simplicity, the marriage
of Boaz and Ruth. The Book of Tobit has the charming story of "love
at first sight" between Tobias and Sarah, and of their prayerful preparation
for marriage and their married bliss. Tobias, we are told, "fell so
deeply in love with Sarah that he could no longer call his heart his own
" (Tobit 6:18). Tobias prays to God:
Be kind enough to have pity on (Sara) and on me
and bring us to old age together (Tobit 8:9).
40. The Song of Songs is one of the most celebrated love songs of all literature.
It is a long Iyrical celebration of the joy of the mutual love between a
young man and a young woman; and yet it is simply an elaboration of the
earliest love song which we find in Genesis, the song sung by Adam when
he was first introduced to Eve. The stress laid in Genesis on the unbreakable
union of the first man and woman in marriage is re-echoed in the Song of
Songs:
My beloved is mine and I am his. (Song of Songs 2:15)
Set me like a seal on your heart,
like a seal on your arm.
For love is strong as Death,
jealously relentless as Sheol.
The flash of it is a flash of fire,
a flame of the Lord himself.
Love no flood can quench,
no torrents drown.
Were a man to offer all the wealth of his house to buy love,
contempt is all he would purchase. (Song of Songs 8:6-7)
Net publishing courtesy of the Newman Center at Caltech
Back to: Table of Contents