What I've learned from 47 years of marriage

I am writing this on the 47^th anniversary of our marriage.  Rose and I were high school sweethearts who married while I was still in college, a year before I was required to enter the US Army in 1968 to serve my obligatory two years of active duty.  August 24^th is the feast day of St. Bartholomew, the apostle also known as Nathaniel in the Eastern Rite of the Catholic Church.  Coincidentally, we were married in St. Bartholomew’s Catholic Church in Chicago, just a few blocks from where Rose grew up.  In the gospel, Bartholomew was introduced to Jesus by Philip, (San Filippo in Italian); another coincidence?

Like all married couples, we’ve had our struggles with all the typical stuff.  In 1968 the Viet Nam war was in full swing and we had every expectation that I would be sent overseas as a 2^nd Lieutenant, so that was hanging over our heads.   I graduated from college in 1969 and reported for duty in the Army shortly thereafter.  Nevertheless, we started a family right away.  Julie was born in 1970 and Joe in 1971.  Both were born in the Army hospital at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri where I had been assigned, pending my orders for Viet Nam.  I extended my service commitment by a year, in order to delay my orders to Viet Nam because otherwise I would have been absent when Joe was born.  As it turned out, President Nixon pulled 100,000 troops out of Viet Nam just before I was headed there, so I never had to serve overseas. In a sense, our marriage and our family was indirectly the reason I did not have to go to war.

The 1970s were challenging years: my starting a civilian career while attending graduate school, Rose home with four kids.  Dan was born in ’76, Jim in ’78.  We bought and sold three houses in Illinois, investing a lot of sweat equity into improving all three.  I realize now that I did not appreciate what hard work it was for Rose, especially with me gone so much for work and school.  We spent the decade of the ‘80s in California, but by 1989 we could no longer handle the increasingly secular culture of California.  The materialistic culture, the over-crowded schools, and the traffic, were all having effects on our family.  To Rose’s great credit she knew long before I did that the best thing for us and for our family was to get back to the Midwest.  Thank God she finally convinced me to move, it was definitely the best thing for us and for our family.

I won’t bore you with any more of our family history, but with all the fuss about marriage and its new secular definition, I want to devote this blog to my wonderful, amazing wife, and highlight why I uphold the traditional definition of marriage.  Our life together has been blessed with four wonderful children and twelve grandchildren.  This is only possible because we are male and female, and as God intended, we have become “one flesh.”  I’m not referring here to our gender and biology alone, but rather the union of our body, soul, and spirits in cooperation with God, who has afforded us the opportunity to participate in the co-creation of these new lives.  I believe it is God’s love that flows through us when love one another in a thousand different ways, through our words, actions, sacrifices, tone of voice, shared experiences, and so much more.  He permits us to participate in the inner life of the Trinity: love so strong it brings about the unity of spirits and the creation of new life.

For me, this is the most meaningful and important part of our married life: the privilege of loving one another, and loving of our children and grandchildren.   This is about much more than romantic feelings, it gives depth of meaning to our existence and purpose to our lives.  Of course I couldn’t possibly have understood this when we were first married.  If I had, perhaps I wouldn’t have been so selfish and full of sinful pride.  Early and often, my selfishness made me unwilling or unable to love Rose the way she deserves to be loved, loved the way God loves her: unselfishly, sacrificially.   Despite my shortcomings, she has loved me and cared for me for five decades now, and in the process her love has (finally) begun to transform me into a better person.  I am better for having been loved; better for wanting to love her more perfectly.  Last Sunday’s first reading called for husbands to love their wives as they love their own bodies, and second reading compared Christ’s love for the church to the marital love of a husband for his wife.  The love described here is sacrificial in nature, wanting what is best for the beloved, even to the point of sacrificing one’s self, just as Christ sacrificed Himself for us.

In our secular world, sacrificial love is anathema, it makes no sense to a culture that holds self-fulfillment to be paramount.  If you grow tired of someone, or they become an inconvenience, discard them in pursuit of happiness.  No-fault divorce is commonplace, and more often than not, children are abandoned along with the tiresome spouse.  The new law of the land implies that the basis of marriage is nothing more than amorous feelings.  Children’s right to be raised by BOTH of their biological parents counts for nothing in the brave new world of marriage.  In this case, it is only logical that the next step is marriage among three or more people, and/or among siblings, parent-child etc. none of which accords with the order of nature, as intended by God and revealed in the natural order of things.

The long standing, biblical definition of marriage is much more than a quaint tradition.  It is the foundation of civil society, and acknowledges that the family is the basic cell of civilization, not the autonomous individual.  Moreover, marriage calls for sacrificial love between spouses and on behalf of parents willing to do whatever is best for their children, whether it is convenient or not.  It is this sacrificial love that is life-giving, nurturing, and the most fulfilling. 

From the time I was a young boy, I knew I wanted to become a father, much like my own dad.  When I met Rose, I knew that she was going to be a fantastic mother.  This nascent intuition has been fulfilled a thousand times over, not because of anything I have done, but because God and Rose have loved me so much and blessed me with a life filled with meaning, purpose, and the joys of married life.

 

Effects of the Decline in Christianity

Every third year the Catholic Liturgical cycle turns to the gospel of John and spends five consecutive Sundays reading from the sixth chapter in which Jesus declares Himself to be “the Bread of Life.”  From the very earliest days of the Church, the apostles and disciples firmly understood that Jesus instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper.  For 1600 years, every person who professed to be a follower of Christ, accepted the belief that He is truly present in the form of consecrated bread and wine, and that He intended for us to consume His Flesh and drink His Blood.  This may sound harsh, but Jesus made His intentions explicitly clear as documented in the sixth chapter of John’s gospel.   I do not understand how anyone who believes in the inerrancy of scripture can draw any other conclusion. 

When the Jews, many of whom were Jesus’ disciples, quarreled about this fact, Jesus Himself responded by saying, “Amen, Amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, you do not have life within you.   Whoever eats my flesh and drinks by blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”  And He didn’t stop there.  “For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.  This is the bread that came down from heaven.  Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”  (John 6: 52-58)  Jesus made it clear that He was NOT speaking metaphorically. “My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.”  Yet, not long after the reformation, when splinter groups left the Catholic Church to form the various protestant denominations, belief in the Real Presence of Jesus in Eucharist fell by the wayside. 

With the advent of the age of enlightenment, Christians began to regard the Eucharist as merely a symbol, and a commemoration of the last supper.  Only the Catholic Church in both the Eastern and Western Rites has retained belief in the Real Presence, and to this day, the Eucharist is regarded as the sum and summit of our faith.  Because of the immense privilege it is to consume the Body and Blood of Our Lord, the Catholic mass remains centered on the Eucharist, and the entire liturgy is still essentially unchanged from the sacred way in which it has been celebrated since the first weeks and months after Jesus’ death and resurrection.  This is why the altar, not the presider, takes center stage in every church, and why the preaching, singing, and prayers of petition are conducted away from the altar where the Eucharist is to be presented.  It is also the reason why we kneel and genuflect, because we are in the Presence of God, not merely a symbol of Him.

Down in Sarasota Florida at the Ringling Museum of art, there is an entire room of 16^th century Italian art dedicated to the Eucharist.  It includes four huge wall-sized paintings depicting a sequence of scriptural accounts of the proto-Eucharist: the first is of the Jews receiving manna God sent to them in the desert (bread from heaven); the second is Jesus feeding a multitude with loaves and fishes; the third is the Last Supper when Jesus instituted the Mass and the Eucharist, (“This is My Body, This is My Blood”);  and finally, a depiction of the consecration of the Bread and Wine becoming the Body and Blood of Christ at Mass. 

My mother, who passed away two weeks ago, was devoted to her Catholic faith and especially to the Eucharist.  Not only did she attend daily mass as long as she was able, for many years she was a minister of the Eucharist, bringing Holy Communion to people who were housebound.  She performed this ministry for many years, always reminding me what a tremendous privilege it was for her to do so.  She drew strength and courage from reception of the Eucharist, and it enlivened her spirit, making her the woman she was in so many ways.  She often commented that she didn’t think she could cope with the struggles in her life, if not for the Eucharist and the Real Presence of God in her life. 

Unfortunately, in recent years belief in, and reception of the Eucharist, has been in decline.  Fewer than 10% of Catholics in Europe attend weekly mass with any regularity (in France less than 3%).  In the USA, the number is about 25% and declining.  Although I have no proof of cause and effect, I cannot help but wonder if this loss of the Real Presence of Christ in the lives of so many people, isn’t the reason for the decline of morality in our culture.  The European Union has set themselves up to be an explicitly secular society, throwing off all vestiges of their Christian heritage.  The result has been a decline in morality, in marriage, in families, and in birth rates as people become more and more egocentric.  Belief in the Real Presence and reception of Holy Communion is a call to put Christ at the center of our lives.   Knowing that ‘we are what we eat’, we quite literally become part of the Body of Christ when we consume His Flesh and Blood.  Without Him, we are more likely to put ourselves at the center, even to the point of rationalizing or even celebrating sinful behavior which is often self-destructive.  Without Christ to guide and protect us, we more easily fall victim to temptation, and the lies and deceit that now pass for our devolving culture.

My mom was once asked by a close friend who was a devout Baptist, why she remained Catholic and her immediate, simple answer was, “The Eucharist.”  I can understand Christians believing that communion is only a symbol, if that’s what they’ve been taught,   but like my mom, I mourn for their loss: foregoing the opportunity to be united in body and spirit with Our Lord!  On the other hand, I CANNOT understand how people who call themselves Christian can condone atrocities like abortion.   In the wake of the ongoing scandals being revealed about Planned Parenthood (PP), a group of Christian pastors who serve as advisors to PP, defended the organization as “doing the work of God.”  What other explanation can there be for this, except that they have completely lost touch with what it means to be Christian?  While this may seem extreme, we have self-proclaimed Christians in positions of authority who now demand that others violate their religious convictions with regard to abortion, birth control, sterilization, and marriage.  This is precisely what Pope John Paul II warned us about when he coined the phrase, the dictatorship of relativism:  a world without Christ that demands everyone adhere to its secular worldview or be punished under the law.