Sunday 6 (B-2006): What God has united

Today is World Marriage Day.

As far as I can gather, it was initiated in 1981 in Baton Rouge in an agreement between the local bishop and civil authorities.

In the mid-90’s, Pope John Paul II gave it his blessing. It is celebrated on the second Sunday of February.

Probably we need to do more to promote and celebrate this day, especially in the light of present circumstances.

Marriage has become a casualty of modern social living, influenced as it is by ferocious individualism and other ways of acting and thinking which seem opposed to the notion of lifelong commitment and self-fulfillment in self-sacrifice, in other words, to the notion of true love.

I won’t bore you with statistics. You know well enough, I hope, the Church’s position on cohabitation, divorce and remarriage and so-called “gay marriage.”

As a priest, I often find that couples preparing for marriage do not really understand why the Church has these positions.

I believe this is the same thing as saying that they do not know deeply enough what marriage is in the eyes of God and, therefore, in the eyes of God’s Church.

They see marriage as “their thing”, a “private thing” as if God and Church had nothing to do with it.

I would like, then, to spend a few minutes trying to explain something of God’s vision as he has revealed it and, therefore, as we must see it if we are truly to be happy as the Lord wants.

I can’t say everything in a few minutes nor can I cover individual personal situations. Don’t shoot the messenger! I simply want to offer a few basic principles for your reflection. I limit myself to the order of creation. Marriage in the order of redemption is a sacrament, and deserves a homily on its own.

Human marriage is rooted in God’s act of creating humanity. “God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them... God brought the woman to the man. Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh’ ... Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Gen 1:27; 2:22-24).

Marriage is, then, a divinely established reality, rooted in the complementary physiology, psychology and spirituality of male and female.

What is more, in the order of creation, marriage is the goal not just of male and female human life: it is the goal of creation itself.

God created everything for humankind, not as a group of solitary individuals, but as a family of peoples made up of nuclear families working together as society.

Humankind is created as the last and crowning work of creation, and that crowning work itself finds its own crowning blessing in marriage, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1:28).

Married man and woman in this sense take up and continue God’s work of creation as pro-creators of his children. In the total and permanent self-surrender of male and female to one another, spirit, soul and body, is found the full image of God the creator.

That image, then, is not some static photograph of God inside us: it is the dynamic, passionate, rational, spiritual and corporal relationship of man and woman who become one in marriage.

In turn, that living image of God the creator must itself be open to God’s continuing work of creating the human race. This is the meaning of pro-creation: a mutual and total openness of man and woman to one another which is itself open to God’s creative act of new life, of the wonder and the beauty of a new, little Adam, a new, little Eve.

In creating, God committed himself for ever to humankind. This beautiful universe and, within it, our home on planet earth have been prepared with infinite tenderness and care – for us.

If God were to break his commitment to humanity, we would cease to exist in the blinking of an eye. The fact that we still exist is proof of his ongoing love and care for us.

That commitment of God’s is not partial, but total: God does not deal in parts. He is “totus et totaliter”, whole and wholly given over to humanity as his bride.

In return, that is what he asks of us: not half-measures, not mediocrity, but total openness, trust and surrender to his divine love.

The wisdom of Scripture tells us, then, that human history begins in marriage, just as the personal history of each one of us begins, or should begin, in marriage.

By God’s will, the earliest lesson of that history is that total and committed self-surrender in love between man and woman is the source of all new life.

That love has a divinely established structure, male and female, which enables the new person born from that love to recognize his or her own place in creation as an Adam or as an Eve, as man or as woman.

Knowing that place with confidence and joy, a person can then relate socially in the proper way to other men and women. In other words, married love as willed by God makes society possible.

Where that love is lacking, its offspring will live in confusion and uncertainty and will carry those pains into society.

The guarantee of a healthy, strong and vibrant society is found in strong marriages, not primarily in social programs or correction institutes or psychiatric medications, although these may be necessary as a result of the failure of marriage.

Society must recognize clearly and explicitly that marriage as it has been established by God is its greatest resource, protection and guarantee. A civilization which rubbishes this notion of marriage will soon lose its civility and even its very existence.

It is not humankind’s prerogative to dispense of marriage in any of its aspects, because it is not humankind’s prerogative to dispose of God’s design of creation.

To tamper with marriage, in its nature, its actions or its goals, is to tamper with the order of creation itself. It is to say to God, “you got it wrong.”

It is to set up an anti-creation, that is, destruction.

Cohabitation is wrong, therefore, because it introduces an opt-out reservation into a relationship which of its nature is intended to be without any opting out or reservation. An “I love you” which adds a “so long as”, is a caricature of love.

Furthermore, just as God cannot be divorced from his creation, the male and female who have truly become one flesh cannot, in God’s eyes, be divided. In his eyes they remain united until death.

Thus, remarriage, if the first one was valid or if neither spouse dies, is impossible in the eyes of God, for he still sees someone as united to their true spouse. He sees one’s spouse as intrinsic to one’s own identity. He does not recognize someone without his or her spouse.

As regards so-called “gay marriage”: if divorce tries to divide what God has united, the same-sex proposal seeks to unite what God has divided.

Marriage is based precisely on the fact that God brought the woman to the man: the woman is the human being who is completely other than the man and in whom the man recognizes his complement and to whom he can most completely give himself as other than himself.

Otherness is not just a spiritual reality: for the human being it must also be physiological and psychological, so that the whole man can give himself completely to the other who is a whole woman, and vice-versa.

The very idea of same-sex marriage eviscerates God’s plan in creating woman for man and man for woman and thus distorts God’s very image in the marriage covenant. It distorts, in other words, the goal of God’s plan for creation and, by definition, the ongoing nature of creation in the openness to new life.

We all know that the situations of real people make this teaching difficult if not offensive. Our humanity, alas, has not preserved the innocent beauty of its first creation.

But we cannot change God’s truth to suit our brokenness; rather we must let Christ’s sacrifice for us heal us so that his truth may set us free to fulfill his ancient plan for creation, for us.

We must resist the temptation to rewrite theology and history and to redo creation. The Devil caused mankind’s downfall by questioning the truth of God’s command.

We must be wary of drinking in subtle and self-serving interpretations of that truth lest we find ourselves defending the Destroyer and not the Creator.

We must certainly exercise full compassion and practical help towards all, especially towards those in difficult or broken marriages or those who are struggling with their sexual identity.

But full compassion is false compassion if it becomes unanchored from the unchanging truth of the order of creation. Christ died so that that order might be re-established.

A primary place where his sacrifice must bear fruit is that sacred and wondrous covenant known as the marriage of man and woman - the full, living and life-giving image in creation of the fullness of love and life of the eternal God.

Msgr. Peter Magee

Sunday, February 12^th, 2006

Annunciation, DC: 10.00 am