Love is for Life: Pastoral Letter of the Irish Bishops
PART III Marriage: Its Graces and Its Stresses
(19.) MARRIAGE AND FIDELITY IN CHRISTIAN REVELATION
169. Religious considerations naturally take first place. In Part I of this
Pastoral Letter, we saw that monogamy and indissolubility are essential
attributes of marriage, in virtue of its very nature, as created by God
in the beginning. Furthermore, God taught his people in the Old Testament
that marriage is a sign of the covenant which God made with his people.
For the people of Israel, marriage reflected God's covenanted love, as well
as giving birth to 'children of Abraham', children of the covenant. The
prophets particularly taught that marriage must be faithful and permanent,
as God's covenant with His people is everlasting and irrevocable. The prophet
Malachi puts it clearly and strongly:
- Do not break faith with the wife of your youth; for I hate divorce,
says the Lord, the God of Israel. (Malachi 2:14-16)
170. It is true that polygamy and divorce were practised in biblical times.
Jesus makes it plain that this was only "tolerated" by God, as
a concession to people who were "unteachable":
- It was because you were so unteachable that Moses allowed you to
divorce your wives, but it was not like this from the beginning. Now I say
this to you: the man who divorces his wife‹I am not speaking of fornication‹and
marries another, is guilty of adultery. (Matthew 19:7-9)
171. In the New Creation which Jesus introduces, the order of God's first
creation is restored; and divine grace is given to make possible what had
hitherto been impossible for many. Jesus said:
- Have you not read that the creator from the beginning made them male
and female and that he said: This is why a man must leave father and mother
and cling to his wife, and the two become one body? They are no longer two,
therefore, but one body. So then, what God has united, man must not divide.
(Matthew 19:4-6).
172. Jesus does add the phrase "I am not speaking of fornication".
The meaning of this phrase has been much disputed. Some have argued that
Jesus is forbidding divorce except in the case of adultery by one of the
partners. It is certain that this is not the meaning; because this was precisely
the "concession " made by Moses, which Jesus is withdrawing .
Furthermore, the disciples were shocked at Our Lord's words. They seemed
incapable of believing that he could be excluding divorce in all circumstances.
Jesus made it clear in his reply that this was precisely what he did mean.
This was the condition of the discipleship which he asked of his followers.
173. The language is the same as that which Our Lord always uses when inviting
people to come and follow him. To follow him is a choice which we must freely
make, and it will involve sacrifice and struggle. But this sacrifice and
struggle are the condition for being truly his followers and for having
his blessing in this world and sharing his glory in the next. The entire
Bible shows that the choice we make for God or against God is a choice between
life and death. The whole of the New Testament teaches that our true happiness
in this life and our eternal destiny in the next, depend on our choice to
listen to Christ's voice and follow his way. The whole of divine revelation
declares equally that the health of society or its sickness depend upon
men and women's obedience to God's law, or their disobedience.
174. The teaching of St Paul about marriage repeats this prohibition of
divorce:
- For the married I have something to say, and this is not from me
but from the Lord: a wife must not leave her husband‹ or if she does
leave him, she must either remain unmarried or else make it up with her
husband‹nor must a husband send his wife away. (1 Corinthians
7:10-11)
We saw already that St Paul places Christian marriage in the context of
Christ's love for his Church. The Church in the past spoke of marriage as
a "contract". The term in ordinary use has a legalistic or even
commercial ring. The Church, however, was thinking not of a cold legal transaction,
but of the covenant-contract between God and his people, between Christ
and his Church, warm with the love of the Heart of God .
175. This covenant between God and Israel, as we have seen already, is described
in the Old Testament in terms of a marriage, with all the tenderness of
married love-life, with all the expectation of fidelity and constancy in
loving which marriage brings. The two elements highlighted in this marriage
analogy are love and fidelity, or love considered particularly under the
aspect of fidelity. Absolute and irrevocable fidelity is guaranteed on the
side of God. This absolute faithfulness of God creates in turn an obligation
of faithfulness on the part of Sion, the bride. The striking fact, however,
is that, even if the bride is unfaithful, this in no way alters or affects
the fidelity of God . All through the Bible, Israel goes on being again
and again unfaithful to God. Her unfaithfulness takes many forms, the worst
of them being the worship of false Gods. Israel is therefore shown as being
fickle, flirtatious, inconstant, immature, even adulterous and promiscuous.
But God is faithful to her, through all and in spite of all. All the Prophets,
particularly Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, described the incorrigible and shameful
infidelity of the bride; but they set against it the inexhaustible patience,
forgiveness and faithfulness of God. To quote only one, Ezekiel, after a
long description of Israel's disgraceful behaviour towards God, concludes
by saying:
- For the Lord God says this. . . You have despised your oath
even to the extent of breaking a covenant, but I will remember the covenant
that I made with you when you were a girl, and I will conclude a covenant
with you that shall last forever. . .1 am going to renew my covenant;
and you will learn that I am the Lord. . . when I have pardoned you
for all that you have done. (Ezekiel 16:59-62)
176. This teaching is reinforced and given a whole new dimension in the
New Testament. All the holiness which marriage already had in its relationship
to the Old Covenant is raised to new heights by the superabounding grace
of the New Covenant. The call to faithfulness which marriage had already
in the Old Testament is given a new absoluteness by the unconditional love
of Christ for us, in the new Covenant which he sealed in his blood . The
most total love the world has ever known was the love unto death of Christ
on Calvary. That love is made present for us again on the altar of the Holy
Eucharist. It is before the altar of the world's greatest love that marriage
in the Church is blessed. Man and woman receive the motive and the power
to love one another unto death from this sacrificial, crucified love of
Christ. It is Christ on the Cross who definitely reveals the meaning and
the depth and the seriousness of married love. The only love which can look
without shame into the eyes of the dying Christ is a love "till death
do us part".
177. This is where St Paul learned the wonderful doctrine of marriage which
he gives us in his letter to the Ephesians (see 45 above). In every marriage
between two of her members, the Church always sees an embodiment of the
union between herself and Christ. The Church can no more admit of divorce
and re-marriage for her members than she could herself think of deserting
God or of being deserted by Him. For the Church, to recognise divorce and
re-marriage for her members would be equivalent to denying her whole experience
of her own relationship with Christ her Lord. It would be not only to renege
her fidelity, it would be to deny her faith. The indissolubility of marriage
is not just part of the Church's tradition and rules. It is part of her
faith and this, not only in the sense that the Church has solemnly taught
this as her doctrine, but also because it is part of how she has been taught
by God to know herself and to understand herself as irrevocably married
to God. If the Church does not permit divorce and remarriage, it is not
because she is lacking in compassion and unwilling to do so. It is because
she cannot do so. She cannot change the teaching entrusted to her by her
Lord. She cannot act in a manner contrary to the clear command of her Lord.
178. Jesus himself obviously knew the enormous difficulties which some people
might have in living up to his teaching. Even the disciples thought him
to be lacking in compassion and to be imposing intolerable burdens. Yet
Jesus was the very model of compassion. He was incarnate compassion, compassion
itself in the flesh. The compassion of Jesus cannot be invoked as a reason
for departing from his teaching on divorce.
179. God's law is never something arbitrary and indifferent to human happiness.
God made the hearts of men and women for happiness; He made them for love;
but He alone knows the happiness that we need and the love for which we
long. He has shaped the hearts of men and women themselves for this happiness.
He has even shaped the bodies of married partners for the sharing of mutual
love. But this love is not just something which happens; it has to be cared
for, fostered
tended and attended to, wanted and willed. It is a slow growth. It has stages
for every phase and mood and season of maturing experience and changing
life-style. It takes time to grow. It needs a lifetime for its full growth.
Christ's teaching on marriage ensures that married love is given all of
life's time to mature. When man and woman have "lived through love
in God's presence" until death do them part, then they will have attained
the only kind of maturity which ultimately counts, maturity in Christ. St
Paul says:
- If we live by the truth and in love, we shall grow in all ways into
Christ, who is the head by whom the whole body is fitted and joined together.
. . so the body grows until it has built itself up, in love. (Ephesians
4:15-16)
180. This is a maturity which men and women cannot achieve for themselves.
But they are not alone. Christ is working with them through the sacrament
of marriage. This is what the sacrament of marriage means. Husband and wife
do not only give one another their bodies, their lives and their love. They
give one another Christ, with all his will and power to love. The love they
share with one another is Christ's love, and this is grace. The greatest
wedding present or anniversary gift which husband and wife give to one another
is the grace of Christ, of which they become ministers one to the other
in the sacrament. Marriage will not lead to personal fulfilment, unless
it leads each partner to fulfilment in Christ. When the Church blesses a
bride and groom on their wedding day, she is praying over them the prayer
of St Paul:
- Out of His infinite glory, may He give you the power through His
Spirit for your hidden self to grow strong, so that Christ may live in your
hearts through faith; and then, planted in love and built on love, you will
have strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth;
until, knowing the love of Christ which is beyond all knowledge, you are
filled with the utter fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:16-19)
181. For those, therefore, who accept the teaching of the Catholic Church,
divorce with the right to remarry is not merely not permitted, it is impossible.
Divorce is a claim by the State to be able, through the civil courts, to
dissolve a valid marriage, leaving the couples free to contract a new marriage.
But there is, as we have shown above, an inherent permanency involved in
marital union itself, in virtue of its own very nature, as it derived from
the plan of the Creator in the beginning. What God has put together in marriage,
no man can put asunder. The truth of the 'body language' of sexual union
implies fidelity and permanence in the giving of self by one partner to
the other. Christ's revelation gives a much deeper foundation to this natural
indissolubility of marriage. For Catholics, marriage is a sacrament. The
bond uniting married couples is a sacramental bond, coming from God alone.
No man or woman, no human authority, no State or civil court, can put this
bond asunder. No legislative enactment can dissolve a valid marriage and
leave the partners free to marry again. Remarriage of a civilly divorced
person is not a real marriage in the eyes of God. God's law continues to
bind, no matter what the civil law says.
Net publishing courtesy of the Newman Center at Caltech
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