Friend,
I was over the moon to hear that you were engaged! Between you and me, it was really just a matter of time!
It’s really incredible what can happen in just a few years. I vividly remember the day you met her, in fact, I was part of the conversation! At that moment, which of us could have predicted what would become of us? For my part, a share in the life of St. Dominic as a consecrated man. For your part, an intention to enter into holy matrimony with her.
As a Dominican friar, I have become acutely aware of the absolute necessity of holy marriages and families. Today, we are in the greatest need of truly Christian marriages, and yet, there is a waning desire for anything of the sort.
Take for example that new movie, Marriage Story.
The title itself is playing a sad joke: the movie is entirely focused on the divorce of a couple with a young son. The divorce seems to be set in motion by the wife’s realization that, though she was a famous and well-known actress in her own right at the beginning of the marriage—“In the beginning, I was the actress, the star… people came to see me”—her fame has now been eclipsed by her director-husband’s public persona—“he was the draw… and that would have been fine, but… I got smaller.”
She was clearly emotionally hurt by this shift, but this only points to a much deeper problem in the marriage: both the wife and husband of Marriage Story have fundamentally self-seeking expectations and are painfully surprised that marriage does not meet them, and in fact, it cannot.
By its very nature marriage is decisively opposed to a self-seeking world view. The wedding vows you will soon make are a definitive ‘yes’ to your spouse, a plea for divine aid, and an offering of your marital life—both the joys and the hurts—as a sacrifice to God. Christian marriage doesn’t deal with conditional promises: “If I am satisfied with *insert*… if I feel good about *insert*… if *insert* is not demanded of me… then I will hold up the vow ‘till death do us part.’”
Nope.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, it is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests” (1 Cor 13:4-5).
That is Christian love and it is precisely the kind of love that society thinks impossible—it is a love that is essentially not self-seeking and the kind of love that makes a life-long marriage possible. This love is fundamentally not about you. In marital love, the individual “you” is taken up into the marital “y’all.” (Yes, I still say ‘y’all’ a lot.)
As a husband and father, you will often be reminded of the great responsibility you have to show your family this kind of humble love: as you tenderly hold your newborn for the first time; as you wake up at three in the morning because a little someone is crying; as you drive to the hospital because a little someone tried to eat glue… again; as you teach a little someone the sign of the cross; as you pay the bills; as you take your wife on dates; or even as you apologize for being so stubborn to your wife. It’s gonna be great!
The Church needs men to live this humble love that movies like Marriage Story make us forget. Your coworkers need you. Your friends need you. Your siblings need you. Your wife will need you. Your children will need you. They need you to be a witness to Christian manhood and to the humble love of the married vocation.
They are not likely to see it anywhere else.
You both have my prayers in abundance. I beg for yours.
Hope to see you soon. Your brother in Christ,
✠
