Contacts & Publisher

Subscription Form

Home  / News & Publications /  Michigan Catholic News / 2009 /  "... to have and to hold ..."

by Deacon Alex Jones special to The Michigan Catholic
Published May 15, 2009

Deacon Alex Jones

The sacredness of marriage is being tested in today's modern society. How are we to define marriage? Is it a sacrament ordained by Christ or is it a union between two loving people who want to share their lives in a permanent monogamous union? These are pertinent 21st century questions that the Catholic Church has answered with the clarity of 2,000 years of Christian tradition. Basically the Church teaches: "The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament" ("Catechism of the Catholic Church" No. 1601).

Gregg McIntosh | The Michigan Catholic “Encountering life’s problems as a couple creates a unity of spirit and heart that is both enduring and unshakeable,” says Deacon Alex Jones.

Marriage is a covenant between a man and a woman for life. And while marital union is fundamental to humanity generally, to baptized Christians marriage has been raised to a sacrament; that is, a union sustained and blessed by grace. Thus, "the sacrament of matrimony ... gives spouses the grace to love each other with the love with which Christ has loved His Church; the grace of the sacrament thus perfects the human love of the spouses, strengthens their indissoluble unity, and sanctifies them on the way to eternal life" ("Catechism of the Catholic Church" No. 1661).

But in today's society marriage is seen through different eyes. George Bernard Shaw once described marriage as that time "when two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive and most transient of passions. They are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part." While such a relationship is probably unsustainable in the real world, most marriages begin with at least a hope of maintaining these intense passions. But as time passes and the optimistic couple navigates the inevitable adjustment period, come face to face with budding careers, encounter the joys and demands of an expanding family, negotiate their first mortgage, and make adjustments to ever-increasing financial responsibilities, the glow of those early days is either extinguished, significantly diminished, or transformed into a more substantive enduring kind of love.

Sadly, divorce statistics underscore the death of passion in many marriages, while many other couples stoically live in relationships where "the feeling is gone" and the relationship is held together by the presence of children, or the fear of the stigma of a failed marriage, or the pragmatic conclusion that economic factors that are better served by maintaining the relationship than separating.

Marriage, however, was never intended to survive on "high-octane passion." Love evolves. Erotic love is based on mutual satisfaction, but matured love turns more from oneself to the up-building and well-being of one's partner. Love matures and deepens if it is not derailed by self-centeredness and faithlessness. Of course the erotic passion that brings couples together should never completely die, but rather evolve into a deeper, more meaningful love, a love that brings greater unity, companionship and self-donation.

Marital love is perfected in suffering. Encountering life's problems as a couple creates a unity of spirit and heart that is both enduring and unshakeable. Love is tempered and deepened through the fires of adversity. Hearts that are broken are reconstituted with a common cause and sense of a common destiny. Just as a potter's hands slowly squeeze clay into a beautiful form, so suffering brings pressure to bear on a marriage and creates a beautiful relationship of companionship and togetherness. The Church teaches: "Conjugal love involves a totality, in which all the elements of the person enter - appeal of the body and instinct, power of feeling and affectivity, aspiration of the spirit and of will. It aims at a deeply personal unity, a unity that, beyond union in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and soul; it demands indissolubility and faithfulness in definitive mutual giving; and it is open to fertility" ("Catechism of the Catholic Church" No. 1643).

A couple's need for love changes as it ages. Erotic love, which is very important to youth, evolves and deepens into the phileo love, or love of friends and companions. As the years go by, the foibles of youth are amended, accepted, or at least forgiven, and the relationship looks for the comfort of friendship and companionship. Sharing, talking and just being in one another's company are as important to the couple as any intimate encounter.

Gregg McIntosh | The Michigan Catholic Deacon Alex Jones and his wife, Donna, have been married for 42 years.

Mutual love finds its maturity in a self-donation, a giving of oneself to another without hope of return. This is agape love, the kind of love that is more concerned with the well-being of the partner than with one's own well-being. This is the kind of love St. Paul urged husbands to have toward their wives: "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself up for her ..." (Ephesisans 5:25). Agape love is the perfection of erotic and phileo love. This is the love that mirrors the love of Christ for His Church. This is the love that moved the Father to offer up His Son for the sins of the world. This is the love that unites the Church into one body. This is the love that moves the faithful to reach out and minister to the helpless and homeless. This is the love that makes family the building block of society. The Church teaches: "No one expects the initial fervor and excitement of a new relationship to remain at such a level for an entire marriage, but love, if left in place and allowed to mature, will eventually evolve into the God-kind of love that is "patient, kind, not jealous, does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice into unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things" (1 Corinthians 13:4-7).

Deacon Alex Jones and his wife, Donna, were married Oct. 14, 1966. He is a public speaker and author.