Browsing tag: marriage

  • Zip It

     I said, I have resolved to keep watch over my ways that I may never sin with my tongue.  I have put a guard on my mouth…. [Psalm 39:1-3]  (Rule of St. Benedict 6.1-6)

    Keep your mouth shut? It’s awfully hard to do.

    It’s especially difficult in a competitive environment, where talking is part of the game, and the loudest ones seem to win.  Across languages and cultures, human beings exercise dominance by imposing verbally over others.  The powerful say whatever they want.  Everyone else has to be careful, and whisper.  Sometimes speaking at all can feel like a fight for survival.  In this as in everything else, the Christian message is paradoxical.  Do you fear being completely ignored, if you keep quiet while everyone else has a say?  Then trust God, and hold your tongue.

    If you follow this teaching, expect to spend many hours of your life listening to other people declaim nonsense.  There are some who will talk at full speed as long as anyone will listen, never pausing for breath.  Curiously, though, as soon as you try to reply, the intense focus of which they are clearly capable dissolves into wandering attention and distracted mannerisms.  They have the energy to speak, but not to remain silent.  Talking requires much less effort than listening.

    Do not imitate them.  In the short term, they seem to dominate the group.  But in the long run, the verbose end up deleted.  Just because people have no choice but to hear you doesn’t mean they are persuaded.

    The goal is not to seal yourself into hermetic isolation, however.  There is a time to communicate what you think.  The monosyllabic sphinx is a tiresome companion too.  When people are sincerely interested in you, don’t weary them by making them guess what’s going on.  It’s on you to communicate in a coherent way.  But what thoughts are actually pouring forth from within you?

    For some, it’s perpetual dissatisfaction.  They can complain about anything, and they will.  If the temperature drops, they complain about the cold.  When it warms up, they complain about the heat.  If it rains, they complain about getting wet.  If it doesn’t, they complain on behalf of the parched vegetation. Keep your mouth shut? You wish you could tell them!

    Others spew malice.  They sidle up, masquerading as sociable.  Beware those who insinuate nasty things about people behind their backs, while attempting to draw you in with flattery.  As soon as you’re out of earshot, they’ll be hissing derogatory remarks about you too.  If you must comment on someone who’s absent, try to think of something positive to say.  Malicious gossips will learn to avoid you, because it repels them to hear others praised.

    Good words come from the good within you.  If only this were enough!  But the thing is that dishonesties characterize the social conventions of every society.  Cultures define themselves by the peculiar sorts of dissembling they require.  Figuring out what you’re not supposed to say is one of the biggest challenges of a foreign environment.  Some are so hateful that you live in fear of tripping a mine whenever you open your mouth.  You have to be careful about speaking the truth.

    It’s safest to refrain from asking questions.  But if you see someone making a potentially dangerous mistake, you must in good conscience speak out.  The other person will likely reject your advice.  Sometimes your intrusion will provoke such resentment that the chill will never thaw again.  But you’re not actually doing anything wrong, if you’re motivated by love.  It’s just that not everyone will want to hear it, even if you’ve got it right, even though you care.

    There are also, inevitably, moments of personal struggle, when you simply must express how you feel, whatever the consequences.  Every human being needs friends.  When another person hears and understands, there’s an enormous relief, quite apart from solving any problem.  Just remember that those who love you enough to listen also need support from you.  Listening is a mutual comfort.

    Sometimes in acute distress we lash out at the person closest to us.  This is human, but it’s also terribly unfair.  Pull yourself together and apologize.  Even in the most loving, most intimate relationships, you’ve got to maintain a proportion of courtesy.  Honesty, like vinegar, is unbearable on its own.  More oil than vinegar goes into a salad dressing, and the same is true for relationships, even close ones.  Try to balance your honesty with some balm for the feelings of the other person.

    Cherish those who care enough about you to listen.  And with strangers, keep your mouth shut.  You won’t get into trouble for what you don’t say.

     

    Home » marriage

  • Fix The Physical

    Treasure chastity. (Rule of St. Benedict 4. 64)

    The obvious difference between a rule written for monks and a rule for married couples is that whereas monks take a vow of celibacy, married couples take a vow of sex.  A Christian marriage requires sex with the same person until death.  Not continuously, of course.  It’s not death by sex.  But in a society with long life spans, sooner or later you’ll face what everyone else does: DD (Domestic Doldrums), the long-drawn ho-hum humdrum.  Your sex life will vary between BTN sex (Better Than Nothing) and NON sex (Now Or Never).

    If you’re dissatisfied, the thing to realize is that only you have this problem.  Everyone else has ecstatic sex daily.  Only you are stuck with an ordinary human being.

    Whatever is wrong with your spouse, feel free to describe it eloquently to God in prayer.  He’s the one who designed the prototype.  He knows what to do to fix it.  But your prayer should begin with thanks: “Thank you God for [name of spouse].  Thank you for BTN and NON.  Thank you for the orgasm I had the other day.  [Was it an orgasm?].  I know I’ve got it BTMP (Better Than Most People).  However, […].”

    Be careful what you say to your spouse.  Human memories are more tenacious than human feelings.  Once you say it, you can’t erase it from your spouse’s brain, even if you’re ok now.  Don’t go complaining to everyone else, either.  It may be true.  It may also be a shabby thing to say in public.

    The goal of the husband and wife is to remain happily married.  In order to stay both married and happy, they need a sex life that is not a form of martyrdom.  In order to have a satisfactory sex life, she needs to be able to enjoy it.  For her to enjoy it, he needs to figure out how the female body functions.  This is tricky, because he can’t get any practice time in if she never feels like trying.  Then again, if he is clumsy, clueless or out of control, why would she ever want to?  Or maybe they just need to change things up. Or try actually going to bed at the same time.

    Don’t wait for passion to return.  Passion is like the booster rocket that propels you into outer space, then falls back to earth, never to be retrieved.  From then on, you’d better know what you’re doing.  The reactor on board is supposed to provide all your power.  It’s a notoriously finicky design, and everyone has problems with it.  Do not skip regular maintenance.  Do not ignore warning lights. You don’t want to be the ones floating aimlessly in the void because the power went out.  You don’t want to be the ones who suddenly explode into smithereens, when no one else even realized there was a problem.  Sex isn’t everything, but it’s the only thing you’re not allowed to outsource.  Only the two of you can keep it in working order.

    The world will tell you that to get the thrill back, you’ve got to unscrew all the stops.  But they’ve got something wrong, because they keep losing pressure.  They have to do worse and worse things to get a jolt out of the system.  And they don’t even try to take care of each other.  No love, no laughs, no one noticing when you’re gone.

    The Christian premise, on the other hand is that you’ve got to keep the unit sealed tight.  The pressure will build back up, and eventually you’ll find yourself considering sex with the person you married.  This might involve taking the initiative to negotiate and implement changes.  Or maybe you know what you need to do, but you’ve been too […] to make the effort.

    What’s all this about work?  You thought you were relaxing on a cruise, not joining the navy.  You can unseal the hatches and bail: one last thrill before Judgment Day.

    On your spiral down you’ll pass the clunker you never thought would make it, still rattling along.  You don’t even want to know what they do to keep that thing going. Married couple sex? They must have figured something out.

    Home » marriage

  • Let Go Of Your Grudge

    A grievance can be like a splinter in the sole of your foot. You don’t want to stop to deal with it. You hope it will work its way out by itself. But it doesn’t work its way out: it wriggles in deeper. It causes more pain, and you think maybe you’ll get used to it. But not only does the pain intensify, it begins to spread, so that the whole area around the splinter becomes hypersensitive. You must take action to get rid of it, and even for just a splinter you might need help with the extraction.

    But not all grievances are like splinters. If you had a bullet in your chest, you wouldn’t hope it would extract itself. You’d know you’d need a surgeon urgently. The more serious an offense is, the more urgent it is for you to let go of your grievance. Refusing to let go of it because it’s the other person’s fault is like refusing to let the surgeon extract a bullet because someone else shot you. Yes, it’s the other person’s fault. But you are the one who has been injured. Therefore you are the one who must undergo treatment. It will be a painful and difficult experience, but in the long run you’ll be much better off than the person crippled by a lifetime’s worth of retained grievances.

    How do we distinguish a grudge from everything else roiling inside?

    A grudge is not horror at evil. If someone who was supposed to be good harms you, what you may feel, more intensely than rancor at the offense is horror at the evil of which you are now aware. Horror is not something you can let go of, not anymore than you can let go of the shadow cast by darkening clouds overhead. Only God can clear the skies for you.

    A grudge is not grief at love spurned. If someone you’ve loved cuts you off, what you must let go of is the grievance at the injustice of it. The sorrow will endure.

    A grudge is not fear of future harm. If someone hurts you who has the power to do so again, you can’t let go of the past while still eaten up with anxiety at what might happen next. Pray for deliverance from your enemy: the Psalms are full of such prayers.

    A grudge is not the memory of what occurred. If you have the sort of imaginative memory that serves up again and again not only the details but all the original feelings, so that you relive the experience over and over, you may dearly wish you could let it go, but you can’t escape your own mind. Consider this: Jesus when he visited his disciples after his resurrection still had holes in his hands and a gash in his side—but the wounds didn’t bother him. So too will yours be, if you commit them to God. Forgiving doesn’t have to mean forgetting.

    Unlike these living emotions of horror, grief, fear and pain, a grudge is a cold, hard, dead thing within you, impervious to change. It wants revenge and will always want revenge, long after you’ve ceased to feel anything else.

    When the thirst for vengeance sets in, it’s like a bacterial infection that develops in a contaminated wound. If it isn’t addressed at once, it can become chronic, like vengeful feelings that persist for years after an offense. The infection can invade your whole body and ruin your health. Vengeful thoughts can obsess you even after the perpetrator is dead. You become vindictive and spiteful. You can’t punish the person who harmed you, so you lash out at someone else nearby. You exact retribution for every petty offense, because everything irritates your sensitive area, and eventually every area is sensitized, because you go through life collecting grievances. Rancor is the only emotion you know anymore, but the word is unfamiliar, because the spiritual state is so normalized that no one names it.

    Jesus tells us to pray, “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.” The phrase rolls off the tongue easily, but living it may involve a long, hard ordeal. It’s what you’ve got to do, though, if you want to live.

    How? You have to accept what God said a long time ago: “‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay.’” This isn’t forgiveness yet: but it’s a necessary step on the way to forgiveness.

     

    (Rule of Saint Benedict 4.23)

    Home » marriage

  • Refrain From Adultery

    Adultery–who does it with whom, when, where and with what consequences–is an endlessly fascinating topic for all societies, and in the literatures of all languages.  Adultery is interesting.  Same old same old is boring.  Bored people commit adultery.

    You may not think of yourself as bored.  You may think of yourself as interesting but unappreciated.  Never mind.  You still don’t have to turn into the sort of person who commits adultery just for the thrill of it.  Cultivate variety in your life–in other areas.  Take on interesting challenges.  Set ambitious goals.  Find something other than sex that motivates you.  Find something other than yourself that holds your attention.

    But what if you’re really tempted?  What if your marriage has degenerated to the point where there’s nothing much left: no camaraderie, no communication, no sex.  What if you don’t even see your spouse, most of the time?  And then you meet someone attractive: someone you enjoy looking at, or talking to, or both.

    Do nothing.  Adultery is not a sin that you’re going to commit inadvertently.  No doubt someone, somewhere has committed adultery by mistake, distracted by something else.  But for most people, this particular transgression involves planning, or at least a series of conscious actions.  There needs to be communication, maneuvering, overcoming of obstacles.  That’s why it’s interesting.  If it were just the pull of inertia, you might as well go home to your spouse and save yourself the part where your kids cry themselves to sleep every night.

    If, like everyone else who has ever had a job, you meet someone attractive at work, the do-nothing rule will ensure that no one ever knows how you feel, because most people’s jobs do not pay them to express their feelings about their coworkers.

    What if you’re required to attend one of those seminars where total strangers goad people into sharing their impressions of each other?

    If you’re clever enough to have that sort of job, you’re clever enough to think of something noncommittal to say.

    What if it’s not a co-worker, but someone you interact with socially: the spouse of a friend; the parent of your child’s friend; someone from long before you were ever married?  The possibilities are endless, and there’s no question that some situations are poignant.  You may be attracted to someone whom you have every reason to respect and like, whom you cannot avoid interacting with, and whom you genuinely care about.  Still, if you do nothing, you won’t commit adultery.

    The do-nothing rule doesn’t mean you aren’t working hard.  To refrain from the action that you could take is the spiritual equivalent of isometric muscular contractions.  Nothing moves, and no one sees anything happening, but it’s very hard to sustain over time.  This is why you need an active outlet for your frustrations: because in tense situations, doing nothing becomes unbearable.

    What if it’s not about a relationship at all?  It’s just sex.  Your spouse can’t keep up with you; is absent, ill, or somewhere else along the spectrum from unwilling to repulsive.

    It’s still adultery.  It’s not a massage.

    What if you never touch another human body?  What if it’s virtual?  What if it’s a really old porn video and everyone in it is dead already?

    Jesus suggests chopping off your right hand (Matthew 5:29-30).  If you’re left-handed, you might have to go for the other side.  But before you try mutilation, you might try improving your relationship with your spouse.  Improving your relationship may not mean improving your spouse.  It may mean improving something else in your life to make your relationship more enjoyable.

    And you must pray:  “Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:13).  Your situation no matter how miserable is not tragic, because God is faithful and will answer prayers.  More specifically, he answers the prayers of people who do the right thing (James 5:16). So do clamor to God to get you out of the situation you’re in and into a better one.  Maybe you need a seismic shift.  God can do seismic shifts.  Maybe you need a new job, a new town, a miracle–love?

    Don’t be surprised that you feel devoid of love.  Everyone gets there.  Not if, but when you’re out of love, turn to God, the source of love, and ask him to give you love for your spouse.  Of course, you have to find within yourself at least a faint wish to love your spouse.  You may need to ask for that first.

    It may not feel like the excitement you want.  It may feel, instead, like the tide imperceptibly flowing in and lifting your beached boat off the sandbar.

    (Rule of St. Benedict 4.4)

    Home » marriage

  • Contend Courteously

    One of the most important skills to develop for life and love is the ability to work through a conflict with another person.

    Yes, you have freedom of expression, but is it going to be the expression of a war zone? Victories can be won on battlefields, but the area remains uninhabitable afterwards for years. Or perhaps you tend to express yourself through the silence of a cold indifference. You may thus establish rulership of your domain, but it will be the barren waste of a permafrost from which have fled all those who attempted to love you.

    There is another alternative. You can choose to approach your relational mess as a construction site. It’s true that injuries can occur during construction, but the intent is to build something.

    Within a family you are always still your own person. But when you got married, you chose interdependence. Does your pursuit of your personal goal disrupt your household? You may have to set that goal aside until a more suitable time. A family like a team is undermined by the sort of individual ambition that sees everyone else as competition. If the thing that is good for you is placing an undue burden on everyone else, then in the long run it’s not good for you either. This is because the people you use or neglect on the way to getting what you want will escape as soon as they get the opportunity. And why would they ever come back?

    These are ugly questions, but you’re better off putting them to yourself than waiting for the terrible day when your children put them to you. Ask them of yourself, and then ask your spouse to assess you. If the two of you can uncover what the underlying problems are, you’ll be well on your way toward improvement.

    Sometimes there’s nothing antisocial about anything you’re doing. Maybe it’s your words that cause problems. Be polite, even to the person you sleep with. Courtesy counts. Listen first, then speak. Remember that it’s on you to explain what you want. The marriage vow does not bestow psychic powers. No one else can read your mind, but if you never pause to reflect, you yourself may not know your own mind either. The more complicated it is, the more time you’ll need to give it.

    And be honest.

    How can you be both honest and polite?

    You’ll need a sense of humor. You also need the grace of God. But as a practical matter, the very small act of checking in with each other regularly can prevent conflicts from emerging. Better to anticipate difficulties and discuss options ahead of time than to play catch-up to poor communication.

    Last but not least, don’t assume that you are right while the other person is wrong. Maybe the other person knows you’re right but is tired of hearing you repeat it. Or maybe something else is going on that would change your view entirely if you just made the effort to find out.

     

    (Rule of St. Benedict 3.4-8)

    Home » marriage

  • Speak Artfully

    …the abbot shall call the whole community together and himself explain what the business is; and after hearing the advice of the brothers, let him ponder it and follow what he judges the wiser course. The reason why we have said all should be called for counsel is that the Lord often reveals what is better to the younger. (Rule of St. Benedict 3.1-3)

     

    You have a dream of a daily dinnertime. The whole family gathers around the table and discusses important topics. Children express their thoughts freely but respectfully. The assertive ones willingly keep silent to listen while the halting share too. Lively debate ensues and does not degenerate into contradictory assertions. No one goes off on a rant. You have the energy to pay attention to everyone and the wit to respond insightfully. Your spouse asks for your opinion. Together you arrive at a decision that everyone is happy with.

    Then you wake up and realize that you’re still in the madhouse. Some of them don’t speak at all: they just scream at the pitch calculated to unravel your nerves. The others do not heed anything you say, and they want everything right now. They stick their fingers into electric pencil sharpeners and throw themselves in front of moving vehicles and sprinkle fish food into toy bins daily.

    When you’ve wrestled away the paring knives clenched in each small fist and extinguished the flames from the cardboard waffle box set on “toast” in your oven, you may feel that your own mind is teetering on the brink. The teaspoons seem to be disappearing, but you’re afraid to mention it, because it sounds—well, crazy. When you catch your son stashing them in the air vent, you’re so relieved not to be insane after all that you don’t even mind the pilfering he’s been doing.

    Your only chance is to outwit them. You must become cunning. Offer them two choices, either of which is acceptable to you, and let them have the pleasure of deciding. Guess what they might do next and get there first. If it can cross your mind—no matter how bizarre a thought—it will cross their minds too, but they will actually do it.

    It’s easier to redirect them than to halt their motion. So, when you forbid one action, make sure to tell them what they’re allowed to do instead. They don’t need good reasons, do they? They can be happy for half an hour just running around in circles. Channel their impulses in ways you can live with.

    Negotiate. If it’s terribly important to them but just a passing preference for you, let them have their way. Save your energy for matters of principle.

    And remember, just because you had a hard day doesn’t mean your spouse had an easy one. Beware Domestic Drone Syndrome, when you can’t remember the last time you said anything that didn’t involve a mundane task. Try to think of something loving once in a while. Life can be hard. Sometimes the world is scary too. It’s not the fault of the person you married.

     

     

     

    Home » marriage

  • Reckon With The Day Of Reckoning

    “Whatever the number of brothers he has in his care, let him realize that on judgment day he will surely have to submit a reckoning to the Lord for all their souls—and indeed for his own as well (RB 2.38)

     

    The bad news is: you have to face God on Judgment Day. The good news is: you don’t have to dress your son in polyester from head to toe and make him play Little League in 100 degree weather while you broil in the bleachers. Patience, kindness and faithfulness are mandatory. Olympic medals, faultless test scores and perfect teeth are optional. You must conform to the image of Christ. You don’t have to conform to the image on the screen.

     

    We do so want the best of everything, for ourselves and for our children. But we also want to enjoy what we’ve got. When you see how miserable people can be when they have it all, you realize that there should be more to life than what the world has to offer. You still want the good things. But you grasp that the good life does not proceed from those things. It’s all about ordering worth rightly.

     

    “That he may not plead lack of resources as an excuse, he is to remember what is written: Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things will be given you as well. Matthew 6:33 (RB 2.35)

     

    To seek first the kingdom of God is to aim for what is consistent with the will of God. Raising the children God has entrusted to you is certainly consistent with his well. So lay out your needs in prayer. You are the manager, the trainer (and the janitor). God is the owner. This doesn’t mean that you never lose a game. It means that you don’t quit when you see the bills. You have someone to turn to when you need more resources.

     

    Your job is to arbitrate a variety of temperaments with some similarities to your own. You coax, reprove and encourage. You adapt your strategy to each child’s personality and abilities. You foster each one’s well-being. But the child is not your property. Parents are trustees of persons who belong to God. We develop their potential. He determines their fate.

     

    The goal is not to render our children into realizations of our ideals. The goal is to form characters in the image of Christ. In the process of correcting our children’s faults, we realize exactly where they came from. Their most annoying traits are often the ones they inherited from us. Sometimes it’s only through the process of parenting that we even begin to understand our own weaknesses. So we too much change. We ask God to transform us together with them into people who reflect his character.

     

    “And all of us…seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another (2 Cor. 3:18).

     

    God is the one in charge of this makeover. Our part is to take Christ as our model and adjust ourselves accordingly as best we can. When you look into a mirror, you alter your appearance to conform to what you think you should look like. As Christians, we adjust ourselves to resemble Christ. This doesn’t mean not facing limitations. If God himself willingly took on human limits, should a human being expect to transcend them? But at the end of the day, even the impossible—if it is consistent with God’s purpose—will be done. Sometimes this means venturing the impossible. Sometimes the impossible is the ordinary day ahead.

     

    A psalter organizes each day into hours, with prayers for each period of time based on the Psalms. At whatever moment you feel yourself faltering, take a minute to pray to God for strength just to make it through the next few.

    Home » marriage

  • Be A Good Model

    Therefore, the abbot must never teach or decree or command anything that would deviate from the Lord’s instructions (RB 2.4).

     

    Parents shouldn’t teach or demand anything that would deviate from Christ’s instructions either, but to hold yourself to this standard means regularly examining your own words and actions. If you catch yourself deviating, it also means making an effort to realign yourself according to Christ’s standard. Your children will not only imitate what you do: they will perceive what you are aiming for. This is good news for parents who are sincerely trying. Your children will grasp the concept and come up with strategies that you never would have thought of.

     

    Then at last the sheep that have rebelled against his care will be punished by the overwhelming power of death (RB 2.10).

     

    No!  Not eternal death!  As a parent, you’re responsible to turn away from the hot door with the smoke seeping around it.  Don’t imagine that your children won’t follow you through it.  You no longer have the option to ruin only your own life.  Even if there’s not always an exit marked Fun, your job is to find one marked Possible.  Sometimes it opens onto a deep stairwell with many steps, but in front of you are extraordinary people with far worse injuries than yours who still have the courage to go on: follow them.

     

    He must point out to them all that is good and holy more by example than by words. . . .  Again, if he teaches his disciples that something is not to be done, then neither must he do it (RB 2.11-13).

     

    Human being copy each other, especially when they don’t know what to do in a given situation. Children especially copy their parents—maybe not today, but perhaps thirty years from now, when they find themselves facing what you face today, and they have no other model for how to react except for what they absorbed from your reactions. If there’s a contradiction between what you told them and what you actually did, they will have to untangle the truth. It will be easier for them if you do the work now of untangling whatever contradictions you inherited from your own parents.

     

     

     

    How is it that you can see a splinter in your brother’s eye, and never notice the plank in your own? Matthew 7:3 (RB 2.15)

     

    The most important model that parents offer their children is their relationship with each other. The hardest thing to do for that relationship is to hand over to God the defects of your spouse and to focus your energies on fixing your own flaws. Each of us must pry out the stake impaled in our own eye socket, so that when our spouse needs help with a speck, we’ll be half blind but hands free. If each of us has one functioning eye and a hygienic patch, together we’ll have the perspective to guide our children.

    That’s not to say that we can’t ever ask our spouse to change. One tactic is to sit down for a swap talk, where each person picks one thing—only one thing—for the other person to work on changing. This is tricky, because the unhappiest person is going to ask for the more difficult change. The other spouse may feel hurt and may not have an equally painful request to make—not yet. Sooner or later the tables will turn. One day you will make the big request, and because you made that effort, back in the day, you will have sufficient influence.

    It makes all the difference in how you feel about someone to see that the person is trying. What drives you to desperation is to feel that you’re stuck with someone whose habit is making your life miserable and who stubbornly refuses to do anything about it. That’s when it starts to look like the only solution is to escape from the marriage. But if you see your spouse attempting to work on the problem, you can feel sympathy instead of disgust. You can hope that life will get better.

    It’s up to the two of you to decide whether the story of your family will be a comedy or a tragedy. Imperfect families that find ways to work things out are always comedies.

     

    Home » marriage

  • Father and Mother: Titles Worth Wearing

    To be worthy of the task of governing a monastery, the abbot must always remember what his title signifies (Rule of St. Benedict, 2.1)

    Father and mother today need guts just to assert that their titles signify anything. These are words under attack, and the linguistic debates are just the tip of the social iceberg. What would in the past have been a yawning tautology today provokes a frisson of risk: a father is a man, and a mother is a woman. But beyond linguistic debates, St. Benedict brings in the concept of worthiness, and that has to do with behavior. A man who begets a child had a consequent responsibility to behave as a father to that child. A woman who conceives a child has the ensuing duty to behave as a mother to the child. Marriage is a partnership between a man and a woman who render each other into father and mother and together serve as parents to the children they engender. These statements are merely observations of phenomena recognized by all human societies—with cultural variations—since the dawn of civilization.

    What the Church adds in is a concept of the sacrament of matrimony in which the marriage of a man and a woman becomes a sign of the relationship between Christ and the Church. In this sign, the husband figures Christ, and the wife figures the Church (Mark 10: 6-9; Catechism of the Catholic Church II.3.7). It’s clear that a Christian understanding of the human being includes a dynamic between male and female that goes all the way back to Adam and Eve. But the harmony of masculinity with maleness and of femininity with femaleness has only recently needed defending. For two thousand years, the Church, for all her struggles, never had to prove the essential maleness and femaleness of humanity. 

    However, the Church in all times and places has taken a stand for the essential humanity of human beings. Human beings are not merely matter and form, but also souls. We’re not just biological machines enmeshed in sociological parameters. We are eternal persons made in the image of God. And God knows individuals. Far from flattening personalities and erasing differences, the Holy Spirit fulfills and brings to completion the design of God in each person—not despite but within the bodies he gives us. Both G.K.Chesterton in Orthodoxy and C.S.Lewis in The Screwtape Letterswrite eloquently about the individuation of Christians. This is why we don’t have to rebel against our bodies in order to be free. We are free to be ourselves already. But we are each called to take up our cross daily and head uphill. And sometimes it’s our own bodies that make us suffer.

    We don’t reject pronouns or representatives because we ourselves are representatives of Christ on earth. As redeemer of the world, Christ is the Pronoun, the part of speech that stands in for another. This is why Christians do not reject the power of “him” to represent us. To reject “him” would be to reject the whole concept of redemption, the atoning sacrifice who stands in for us before the holy God. 

    All this is to say that worthiness is something we give ourselves to, the effort we make each day. But worth is something given to us, something that an atheist culture does not have the right to take away. We know that we are worth the self-sacrifice of God. Therefore each day we make an effort to be worthy, to embody in our circumscribed, imperfect persons the divine character qualities of Christ.

    So be boldly and bodily the man or woman God bids you to be. Your choices will light the way for people who are groping for their souls.

    Home » marriage

  • The Call

    Let us get up then, at long last, for the Scriptures rouse us when they say: “It is high time for us to arise from sleep” Romans 13:11 (Rule of St. Benedict, Prologue.8)

     

    I myself had an experience of a call involving Scripture and a stirring up from physical sleep, on a particular occasion.  At about 2 a.m., the morning of June 19, 2012, I woke up with the urgent sense that I should post verses of Scripture online.  

    So I thought, “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

    But the urgency increased.  I felt that I must check the readings for the day–not in the Upper Room guide to prayer that I’d been using for twenty-two years, but in the Catholic Missal app, which I had downloaded on my phone at some point but had never even opened before.  I fumbled with my phone in the middle of the night and read the Scriptures that showed up: 1 Kings 21: 17-29 (the Lord sends Elijah to confront Ahab). Psalm 51 (“…in the greatness of your compassion wipe out my offense….). Matthew 5: 43-48 (“love your enemies“).  There was also a daily Bible verse, Acts 17:30-31:

     

    God has overlooked the times of ignorance, but now he demands that all people everywhere repent, because he has established a day on which he will judge the world with justice through a man he has appointed, and he has provided confirmation for all by raising him from the dead.

     

    There was a “share” button to post this verse on Facebook.  It was imperative that I must do so at once.  I signed in to my rarely-used Facebook account, and I posted the verse.

    This experience had never happened to me before.  It hasn’t occurred again since.  Afterwards, trying to come to terms with it, I explained to God that this was the wrong message, entrusted to the wrong person, at the wrong cultural moment.

    These days, God is not supposed to “demand” anything.  God should be grateful if anyone condescends to consider that he might exist.  And if God did want to get a message out to all people everywhere, my Facebook (or Substack) page is not the place to do it.  Furthermore, people these days don’t repent.  A few Catholics make a practice of going to Reconciliation, but the people who do most of the sinning aren’t interested in repentance at all.  

    There must have been some mistake.  The angel tapped the wrong person.  I don’t have the credentials, the platform, the authority or the influence.

    Years later, I still find it difficult to view my contributions as tilting the scales toward good, against evil. Even to mention such an eventuality strikes me as comical rather than inspiring. It’s easier for me to perceive in others the spiritual stupor that is the perfectly normal condition of nice people who imagine that evil is always necessarily someone else’s problem. There is a clear difference between the sort of people who make an attempt—any attempt—to engage at whatever level is available to them, and, on the other hand, the people whose lives seem to be devoted to various ways of escaping. If the spiritual battle has to do with this fundamental difference in stance, then I do prefer to resemble the former type rather than the latter. But in a society where spectating rather than participating is the default path, and where any sort of action makes you the fumbling, ridiculous spectacle, resolving to be an agent in your own environment at a small level—because smallness is risible—is peculiarly daunting.

    But St. Benedict provides some insight into personal calls from God:  Seeking his workman in a multitude of people, the Lord calls out to him and lifts his voice again: “Is there anyone here who yearns for life and desires to see good days?” Psalm 34:12 (Rule of St. Benedict, Prologue.14-15)

     

    There’s a promise here, and it’s not just pie in the sky bye ‘n bye.  The promise of God for those who will heed him is a good life beginning here and now.

    The Lord waits for us daily to translate into action, as we should, his holy teachings.  Therefore our life span has been lengthened by way of a truce, that we may amend our misdeeds.  As the Apostle says, “Do you not know that the patience of God is leading you to repent?” Romans 2:4 (RB Prologue.35-37)

    If we are each called to translate Christ’s teachings into daily action, how do we operate within a culture that has explicitly rejected Christ and that organizes itself along opposing principles?

    Therefore we intend to establish a school for the Lord’s service.  In drawing up its regulations, we hope to set down nothing harsh, nothing burdensome.  The good of all concerned, however, may prompt us to a little strictness in order to amend faults and to safeguard love. (RB Prologue.45-48)

     

    Every household with children is a school: the question is, into whose service are the children being formed?  If the home is spiritual chaos, the child may emerge into adulthood unfit for any good purpose.  Spiritual discipline costs effort every day, and sometimes it is at odds with the various activities that the world equates with success.  But to overlook spiritual discipline costs far more. You pay the price in illness, loneliness, and despair, and your decisions as a parent also play out in the lives of your children. It’s easier to perceive these trajectories in other people’s lives than in my own, but my own life is the only one I can live.

    Rather than raging at evil in others elsewhere, let us combat it where we are.  The battle for good against evil will be won or lost behind closed doors, without recognition or applause, but the consequences will yield a harvest for good or ill in the lives of those we care about.

    Home » marriage
    • Previous