Marriage and the Family: Brilliant Icons of God’s Love in Our Midst

By Bishop Paul S. Loverde
Special to the HERALD
(From the issue of 4/29/04)

In this coming Sunday’s Gospel reading, we will find Jesus at the Feast of the Dedication in Jerusalem teaching those gathered around him, "The Father and I are one" (Jn. 10:30)."

His words turn our minds once again to a reflection on the unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the way in which we are created in His Trinitarian "image" and called to love. In a special way, we consider how the married man and woman reflect God by becoming "one," forming a communion of persons, and expressing their love through their God-given bodies. As we have seen, Pope John Paul II, reflecting up what he terms the theology of the body contained within the creation accounts in the Book of Genesis, argues that we express our vocation to communion, to love, not only interiorly but also exteriorly through our bodies.

Among the most stirring moments in my nearly 40 years as a priest and 16 years as a bishop have been weddings and marriage jubilee Masses. Weddings, with their permanent covenantal vows of unconditional love, provide us a thrilling glimpse into that "great mystery" (Eph. 5:26) and "primordial sacrament" which God authored at creation and Jesus blessed with his first miracle at Cana.

Jubilee Masses of couples celebrating decades of marriage often evoke in the friends, family and community gathered an extraordinary outpouring of gratitude, joy, admiration and love. These emotions, present in the faces of the couple’s children and grandchildren, testify to the grace of God moving in and through a particular man and woman who have united their wills, put the other first, and loved one another in total fidelity for many years. In the faces of the jubilee couple we witness a breathtaking, physical icon of the living God which can draw us to a deeper understanding of God’s love for us and His Church.

What an exalted and challenging vocation married people have. Marriage is a "light to the world," a "city set on a mountain." The sacrament of marriage is a sign of hope for the world. It will give light or darkness to our world.

Whether we consider a bride and groom embarking on a life together or a married couple celebrating decades of marriage, both attest to the way in which the covenantal love of their marriage, marked by mutual self-giving, can be a vital source of renewal in our families, parishes, and society.

The married couple is united in love by a decision, a freely chosen act of the will to be with and to stand by one another in a mutual, life-giving relationship, one that is both permanent and faithful. The love between a man and a woman who enter into marriage is covenant-love that is both founded upon and testifies to God’s love for Israel and Christ’s love for His Church (Eph. 5:25-26). In their covenant, the married man and woman "become the image and symbol of the covenant which unites God and His people" (Pope John Paul II, The Family in the Modern World, 12).

Pope John Paul II teaches us that married life images the interior life of the Holy Trinity in the "communion of persons," and that one helps us to understand the other. The Father pours Himself out in self-donating love to His Son, and the Son receives the Father’s love and pours Himself out in self-donating love to His Father. The Holy Spirit, in turn, is the personal expression of this reciprocal, self-donating love between Father and Son. Theologians sometimes refer to the Holy Spirit as the love that binds Father to Son and vice versa. Pope John Paul II has spoken of the Holy Spirit as the "mutual love-gift" of the Father and the Son.

Is this not the nature of married love? Is this not the essence of married life? A self-emptying, self-donating love for the other spouse which forgets self and only wishes to love and seek the authentic and total good of the other? Is this not the definition of love given to us in chapter 13 of the First Letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians? In this deep communion of persons found first in the Trinitarian life, and then mirrored in human spousal love, we find the model upon which marriage is founded, the building block upon which marriage rests. As we see in Genesis, marriage and the family exist prior to civil society, a fact which has implications in that the natural structure of marriage is set in place already. A society does not and cannot dictate the structure of marriage.

Pope John Paul II often speaks of this vocation of man and wife to communion. He writes, "It is also through the body that man and women are predisposed to form a ‘communion of persons’ in marriage. When they are united by the conjugal covenant in such a way as to become ‘one flesh,’ their union ought to take place ‘in truth and love,’ and thus express the maturity proper to persons created in the image and likeness of God" (The Family in the Modern World, 12).

This brings us to the family, which flows from marriage and is often referred to as the "domestic church" and "a school of deeper humanity." As we have seen, married love images the interior life of the Holy Trinity. This deep intimate communion of husband and wife lived out in self-donating love is intended, in God’s design, to flow beyond itself into the gift of a child, "the supreme gift of marriage" (Gaudium et Spes, 50), a third person wholly distinct from the other two. In this, the married couple becomes "cooperators with God" and gives birth to a "living reflection of their love" (The Family in the Modern World, 14). By the couple’s unity and fidelity, and by the "loving way in which all members of the family cooperate with each other" (GS, 48), the Christian family demonstrates Christ’s presence in the world.

Like the newly- or long-married couple, the Christian family can be a source of renewal for our parishes and society at large. "Christian marriage and the Christian family build up the Church," writes the pope (The Family in the Modern World, 15). As an "intimate community of life and love," the family has a mission to "guard, reveal and communicate love" (Ibid., 17). Healthy marriages bear good fruit. And, when healthy men and women are living and becoming all that God created them to be, both our Church and society flourish.

Each of us is part of a God-given family. Let us first give thanks for our families, and then ask what we can do to make them a "light on a hill," a more vibrant reflection of God’s love. "Family, become what you are," said our Holy Father, "a community of life and love" (Ibid., 17).