The Friendship Which Is Marriage

This is the fourth in a series of introductory essays on the document “Love is Our Mission: The Family Fully Alive,” the preparatory catechesis for the eighth World Meeting of Families which will take place in Philadelphia next September 22-27, 2015 with Pope Francis. The first essay on the first chapter is here. The essay which introduces the second chapter is here. The third is here.

Chapter four is called “Two Become One.” It is about the unitive dimension of marriage, the one-flesh bond of love between husband and wife.

Chapter four of the catechesis makes the claim that “Marriage is a uniquely intimate form of friendship that calls a man and a woman to love each other in the manner of God’s covenant.” I think this statement is the key to the chapter and so I’d like to explore what that means.

A unique and intimate friendship

Marriage is a form of friendship. There are many forms of friendship and a person is blessed who has many friends. Our friendships are not even limited to human beings: a person can be friends with God, his guardian angel, and his pets.

But matrimony is a unique form of friendship. Husband and wife promise their particular form of friendship to each other and to no other for life. Their friendship is exclusive and permanent.

Their friendship is also uniquely intimate. To use an old-fashioned but revealing phrase, they share bed and board. They sleep together and live together.

A friendship which is a covenant

And when the spouses are baptized, marriage is also a vocation to love each other in a particular way: in the manner of God’s covenant. What does it mean to love “in the manner of God’s covenant”?

God made a covenant with humanity through Adam and later through Noah. He made covenants with the Chosen People he formed through Abraham, Moses, and David. Finally, he made a New Covenant with humanity through Christ.

The New Covenant is the final and irrevocable agreement between God and humanity.

The New Covenant is basically this promise by Jesus Christ to all of us: “I will give you everything if you will follow me.”

Following Christ is living the New Covenant. The Christian life, which every baptized person is called to, is nothing more than living the New Covenant, following Christ. The Sacrament of Marriage is a particular way of doing this. So marriage is about following Christ within this unique friendship of man and woman.

The friendship that follows Christ

But what does following Christ mean? It means loving him the way he has loved us.

Members of the Church on earth cannot love Christ directly, because he has ascended into heaven. So instead, we love him by loving one another as he has loved us. This love, or charity, is acting for the true good of the other even when it requires sacrifice. This New Covenant love is Christ’s New Commandment: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (Jn 13:34). This is how we follow him. This is loving in the manner of God’s Covenant.

• So in loving, the Christian adopts the standard given by Christ, which is self-giving.
• The means of being self-giving are the graces received in the Sacraments and the virtues we practice and develop.
• The outcome is the interior freedom which arises from self-mastery. This is a freedom which is not ruled either by emotions or passions. It is able to integrate feelings and desires into love.
• The special arena or “vital space” in which the Christian life is lived is the community and communion of persons that is the Church.
• One enters this arena by making promises, beginning with our Baptismal promises.

The friendship which follows Christ in marriage

How does this manner of loving, which belongs to every follower of Christ, pertain to marriage?

Recall, “Marriage is a uniquely intimate form of friendship that calls a man and a woman to love each other in the manner of God’s covenant.”

• The standard, once again, is self-giving. Husband and wife give themselves to each other even to the point of sacrifice.
• The means is sacramental grace, and now are added the unique graces of the Sacrament of Matrimony, and the development of virtues necessary to share bed and board and, God willing, to raise a family. One of the most important virtues for marriage is chastity, “the practice of seeing our sexuality in the context of communion and the holiness of each other’s personhood.”
• The outcome is self-mastery so that the spouses can integrate their physical desires and changing emotions into their unselfish love.
• The arena is their own community and communion of persons in their exclusive and permanent friendship whose characteristic act is sexual intercourse open to life, and which, God willing, will include the children God blesses them with.
• They enter this arena also by making promises, their wedding vows.
• They can celebrate this sacrament every time they do what is proper to marriage. What is proper to marriage is sexual intercourse as well as every other act of love and service they give each other and their children.

I hope this brief introduction will help you in your reading of the preparatory catechesis and mediation on marriage as this “uniquely intimate form of friendship that calls a man and a woman to love each other in the manner of God’s covenant.”