I am writing this on the 47th
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 24th
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 2nd 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.
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