[AI translation] The more I get to know about life, the more I see the sad fact that there are so few really good, really happy marriages in the world. And yet, as I mentioned once before, marriage is God's blessing to man. From paradise after the Fall, man brought with him, as an Edenic gift and blessing, the fact of marriage. This, as well as work, is something else from paradise, from the lost happiness in which man had a share according to God's creative order. Even today, a truly good marriage reflects something of the light and glory of the ancient Eden. What then becomes of this divine gift in the hands of man is shown by the sad experience just mentioned: in our hands even blessing becomes a curse, and the remaining piece of Eden can become the foretaste of hell! Jesus' words of warning sum up the many evils that corrupt marriage: man separates what God has joined together. Here, too, sin is at work as a dividing, disruptive, disorganising force. What does this mean in practice? What divisive, disruptive forces are at work to corrupt marriage in concrete terms, what are we to defend against and fight against? This is what I would like to talk about now on the basis of the Scripture that has been read.Many marriages bring disruptive forces with them from the very beginning. For, according to God's Word, every marriage begins as the first one did: "And the Lord God said, 'It is not good for a man to be alone; I will find him a companion to help him, a partner suitable for him.'" (Genesis 2:18) It's just that in the excitement of getting married, people don't tend to pay much attention to what the Lord God "said"! But rather what their own desires say, or what their blood says, or what the spirit of the age says, or what novels or movies say. Many marriages are ruined because they were based on false expectations when they were contracted. Marriage is seen only as a legalisation of a love affair, a charter of freedom that gives one person the right over the other. Thus, only a sexual relationship is then formed between the spouses, without one of them desiring and seeking the other inwardly! This love affair, which seeks to be lived out within a legal framework, reinforces in man the tendency to regard the other as a means to his own selfish ends, that is to say, to make himself happy. But if I see the other person only as a means to satisfy my own desires, as a means to the end of my own pleasure: how can I myself be more than that to him?! He remains poor, I am slowly impoverished in him. The only carnal desires, once satisfied, make the partner bored and used to it, and they look for something new and different.
A mongrel instinct develops in people: suspicion, fear of everything that entails responsibility, that limits freedom of action, arbitrariness. That is why many people, in spite of their sexual informality, also have a fear of marriage. Fear of the responsibility and restriction of being bound to one person for life. Because what guarantee is there that they will not get bored of each other? We know well what that means: boredom - they have nothing more to say to each other. They turn something on between them: the radio, or the newspaper, or evening company, or constant work, or the nervous rush! And all this to cover up, if possible, the gulf between them. It is precisely out of this fear that many marriages are not entered into with the intention of being a 'never-ending, never-ending' community, but with the conscious intention of putting a time limit on the marriage and giving notice: consciously keeping the possibility of divorce, the escape hatch, open! In this way, the forces of separation and disruption are already present in the marriage itself. Is it any wonder that it does not lead to a happy family life? And all this misery is the result of the lack of faith in the creation of marriage: faith in what God says about it, faith in the fact that it is still valid today and the only sure foundation - faith. And God said, "It is not good for a man to be alone; I will find him a helper, a companion worthy of him" (v. 18).
Let us believe what God says here, that it is not good for man to be alone. And not only because life is more boring, tiring and difficult alone, but also because living alone makes a man very selfish, self-centred, introverted, self-absorbed, all his desires, aspirations, goals and actions are turned back in on themselves. This is not good! For man, what is good according to God is to learn to live not for himself, but for the other man. Marriage is the basic human form of existence that leads out of selfishness, out of isolation - into community. The purpose of marriage is not the child - that is already its fruit, its gift - but the purpose of marriage is the communion of two people in life with each other, the deeper experience of this communion. Only a full and real communion of life justifies the communion of the flesh. Only a communion of life which accepts the other fully and does not regard him or her as a means to happiness can make the other happy in the long term.
Then let us also believe what God says: I will make him a helper. So, just as Adam received Eve from the hand of God, so the present Adam receives the present Eve from the hand of God as a suitable helpmate, a life partner. Let us believe that it is not by chance that our spouse is who he or she is, but that God has chosen him or her for us! Believing that we belong to each other by the will of God is the surest foundation for marriage. Every marriage is truly made when the spouses recognize in faith that God has destined us for each other, and we take this as our commitment. Therefore the Scripture continues, "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall become one flesh." (Genesis 2:24) In other words, Adam realizes that God has given him someone, and for this reason he clings to her. And this is still the case today: no one can truly cling to his life partner faithfully for a lifetime, except those who have recognized and accepted in faith that they have been given each other by God. There are many other reasons why husband and wife cling to each other, but none of them is permanent. I have seen a wife cling to her husband for the reason of a shiny army officer's uniform, but as soon as changed circumstances made the husband put down that beautiful uniform, the wife's clinging also ceased immediately. And it is the same if one is attached to another for money, or for a good, distinguished position, or for beautiful eyes, or for love - oh, very uncertain reasons! For what will become of that attachment if the light of the beautiful eyes is broken by age, the dowry is taken away by economic ruin, the good job is uprooted by rationalization, the children are taken away by God, and the spouse is left poor, old or sick, alone, deprived of his or her jewels? Is there then nothing to cling to? And is marriage still a marriage without this attachment? Is it not the very fact that two people are attached to each other that makes a marriage? That one stands by the other, carries the other with his whole being, that is, with his misery and poverty, his poverty and desolation?! And this is only possible if they take one another on in faith, as God's helpers. It is for this reason, for this reason alone, that they cling to each other, that they can cling to each other in such a way that this clinging always remains beautiful, always new, always fresh, always interesting and happy. He clings to his wife: not to himself, not to an idea: to his wife. Someone once complained to his spouse: 'Unfortunately, I realised too late that I had made the wrong choice! I said to him: you have indeed not chosen well, because you have chosen yourself. In marriage, it is always the one who chooses the other who chooses well, the one who loves the other in marriage, not himself! Your spouse! Him alone, him all the way and him all the time! And because God has given him as a helper, a gift, a task - a blessing!
Moreover, it is not only in its creation that married life is attacked by disruptive forces, by divisive influences, but also in its internal structure. Any marriage that does not have the internal order prescribed by the Word of God bears the seeds of separation. What is this internal order? It is beautifully expressed in the biblical passage that we read: 'So the Lord God gave man a deep sleep, and he fell asleep. Then he took one of his ribs and filled its place with flesh. And the Lord God formed the rib which he had taken out of the man into a woman, and brought her to the man. And the man said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: this shall be called a woman, because it is taken out of man." (verses 21-23) This has a very deep meaning. God did not create Eve from Adam's head, because that would have been the danger of a woman ruling over her husband. Nor did he take Eve out of her feet, for that would have been the danger of the man trampling the woman underfoot, making her inferior to himself. He did not even form her from Adam's shoulder, for then the man might have been tempted to lay the heavier burdens of life on her. Nor is Eve from Adam's back, lest Adam should eclipse his wife in relation to himself. But God took one of Adam's ribs and made it into a woman. So the woman is from the place of the man, where his heart beats, where the pulse of life flows out into his body. From his side, so that she is right beside him, not above him, not below him, not in front of him or behind him, but beside him, and so that both of them feel the same heart beating inside them, united in intimate love, walking the paths of life together. "The two shall become one flesh", says the Word, in a way that the husband is the head and the wife the heart of that body! In marriage, husband and wife become a community of life, a community of destiny, a community of body and soul. This is the internal order of marriage ordained by God.
This mystical unity of two people is constantly being disrupted by a multitude of divisive forces. I would like to speak separately about the disruptive effect of the appearance of a third person on the scene and the gossip or malice of another. It is not only such crude, large, violent divisive forces at work, but also much simpler, much more subtle ones: small, initially barely perceptible internal rifts. Many husbands are unaware of how much they let their wives down when they come home tired and listless, hiding behind the newspaper. And many wives don't realise that their husbands, who come home so empty and exhausted, need to be completely unplugged before they can turn their attention to the family problems! Each should learn to think from the other's point of view, to consider the situation from the other's point of view and to go ahead of the other, instead of holding on to our own. "Let not the sun go down on your anger," says the Word of God in one place. Reconciliation with God means always starting over in marriage too! How can you be free to despair over the other party; God will not despair over you, though he has every reason to! What God has joined together should not be separated by petty quarrels, disagreements, boredom, habit!
We must dare to take small steps towards each other. We are also free to please each other: head to heart, and vice versa. I read a little story the other day: a man went into a florist's shop, pointed to a bunch of flowers and said: This is my wife's favourite flower, I want 20 of them! The lady who served him expressed her sincere sympathy to the man over his wife's illness. "My wife is ill?" he wondered, "what makes you think she's as healthy as you are! She said, between great apologies: "I apologize if I am mistaken, but it is customary for older men to buy flowers for their wives when they are ill or dead. While it is not too late!
All this, of course, remains only a beautiful theory and good advice without Jesus Christ! It is useless to know the good if the forces of destruction are stronger than the best human will. But God's great good news for man, for marriages too, is that in the death and resurrection of Jesus, the fountain of love has been raised up, which covers everything, believes everything, hopes everything, endures everything, and never runs out! It is a source of miraculous healing that heals even the sickest married life!
It is the only effective antidote to all destructive forces. Truly the water of life. We can draw from it and drink from it. So let us all draw and drink from it, every day, again!
Amen
Date: 7 October 1956 (Family in the Bible II)
Lesson
Mk 10,1-9