By Fr. Roy Cimagala
“WHAT therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” (Mk 10,9)
That, in a nutshell, is how God created and designed marriage for us. It’s a lifelong, unbreakable commitment that is founded on God’s love and on our faith in him. Marriage is never just our own invention that would depend on how things go nor on the terms we set for it. Marriage should be entered into according to God’s designs for it, according to his terms, and not ours.
Thus, in the wedding ceremony, the man and the woman, armed by God’s grace, promise each other that they will stick together “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.”
As designed by God, marriage is for a man and a woman who in their God-based love for each other make themselves one flesh. Being a God-based love, it has to go beyond the human level of love. It has to be a love that is supernatural as shown to us and shared with us by Christ.
This God-based love will definitely be quite a tall order for us, since we are expected to go beyond our human and natural powers and resources. But as long as our faith in God is deep and strong, we can hack it, because more than us it is God himself who will enable us to love as God loves as shown to us by Christ. This God-based love can handle anything in our life.
Given the confusion and errors now besetting this issue on marriage, we need to reiterate that marriage is meant only for a man and a woman. There’s no such thing as same-sex marriage. Why? Because marriage is meant primarily for procreation of children.
And it has be exclusive—that is, between one man and one woman. It cannot be polygamous. Why? Because marriage is based on a love that involves the use of the body. Since in love, everything is supposed to be given to the beloved by the lover, once that body is given to the beloved, it cannot anymore be shared with another partner. Unlike in a love that is spiritual, the more people we love, the better.
But more important to realize about marriage is that it is actually a path to holiness. It is not just a purely human and temporal affair. It has great potentials for the parties involved to pursue the common goal of ours to attain holiness, our identification with God through Christ, since we are all God’s image and likeness.
That is why everything has to be done to make marriage achieve its fullest dignity. And that means that we have to purify and elevate the love that is the very germ of marriage to the supernatural order as it should be.
That love has to develop from simply being natural and body-emotion-world reliant to being more and more spiritual and supernatural, driven by grace rather than by mere natural forces.
With the sacrament of marriage, the love between husband and wife is already guaranteed to have all the graces needed to make that marriage reach its fullness. What is needed is the faithful and generous correspondence of the parties concerned to those graces.
The parties involved should realize that their love for each other should reflect and channel the very love Christ has for the Church. Yes, the union of husband and wife should be like that of Christ toward the Church. (cfr. Eph 5,22-33)
Email: roycimagala@gmail.com
