Unconditional Love in Marriage. An Impossible Task without God.

ME

Good morning! It is an early morning for me - in full disclosure the 8am mass doesn't come as natural to me as it does for you! But don’t worry I am awake!

Lately I have developed a soft spot for young couples who decide to get married. I find this a fantastic and beautiful thing. Unfortunately, many couples that marry outside the Catholic Church often don't have a solid program that prepares them for the married life. 

So when I come across people that are talking about getting married, I often try to ask if they have someone that is preparing them for the marriage. This is one way I use to Evangelize.

And, this is exactly what happened a few days ago. I went to the gym and after working out I went in the hot tub. Few minutes later a young man came in and I overheard him talking about getting married. A few minutes pass and I am thinking - I really would like to talk to him about marriage preparation. Finally I found the courage to break the silence with some small talk and I noticed from his response that he was open to talk more. So I congratulated him about the decision to get married and he thanked me and I could sense his excitement. Then I asked - how is the preparation going? 

He answered about listing all the activities they are doing - and how busy they were with all the decisions they need to make. Then he asked me: Are you married? I said : yes! I am very blessed, and this year we are celebrating 30 years of marriage. He said: wow! What advice would you have for us? 

Inside me I was like - Yes! This is going in the right direction! 

I told him that the most important thing right now for them is to focus on the promises you are going to make to each other. Are you going to promise that you will care for your wife as long as you love her? Or that you will care of your wife no matter what happens? In rich and poor, in health and in sickness?

He said: this is what scares us. We are scared to make such a permanent commitment because we don’t think it is possible to do it. I said: that is awesome that you and your fiance have this awareness and are thinking about it. Do you have someone who is preparing you for marriage? He said - my fiance is Baptist and her pastor is helping us. I said that’s awesome that both of you are inviting God into your marriage. I also told him: you are right to have doubts about being able to promise a vow of permanency and fidelity that is unconditional. It is impossible to keep those promises with only human strength. This is why we get married in the church - because only by inviting God in the marriage can we promise an unconditional love, for poorer and for richer, in health and in sickness.

If we are open to God in our life ,God will give the supernatural-strength to love unconditionally.

YOU

Have you experienced unconditional love? To be loved no matter what you did?

Can you love others no matter what they do?

Or, using another angle - Do you love conditionally? for example only those who in some ways give you something back? 

GOD

In today’s gospel Luke highlights Jesus' high demands on all his disciples - and by the way that’s all of us. He commands us to “love our enemies”; to “do good to those that hate us”; “ to bless those that mistreat us.” 

As the Catechism says Jesus gave us the new law: “To love as Christ loves us”. Not just the Golden rule “Do to others as you would have them do to you”. But to love others as Christ loves us. This is a much higher Law. 

I don’t know about you, but I have found that it is really hard to pray for those that mistreat me. Even when I pray in silence, the words of blessing for those that mistreat me don’t come out easily!

So, why? Why is Jesus asking us to behave in such a strange way? A way that is not natural to us? The reason is that as Christians we are called to become one with God. Our life is meant to be a journey towards divinization to become like God. This is the reason why Jesus became incarnate, became like us in the flesh - to show us how God loves others in the flesh, in this real world.

St. Athanasius of Alexandria very wisely and prophetically proclaimed that God became human, so that we might become God. To quote him precisely he said: “The Word of God was made man that we might be made God; and He manifested Himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the Father.”

St. Athanasius was a foundational figure of the early church, Pope Benedict called him “ a pillar of the church”. He lived in the IV century, died in the year 373 and fought very hard against the arian heresies. He participated in the Council of Nicea and helped shape the Creed that we will recite right after this homily.

Becoming like God for us means becoming like Jesus. 

From an appearance point of view, Jesus is fully human like us. But we know that he is also fully God. So, what makes Jesus fully God?

Jesus' divinity is in his heart. His heart is fully saturated with the love of God. Our heart is not. Our brokenness and original sin create all sorts of impediments for our heart to be fully saturated with the love of the trinity like Jesus’s is.

However you might have experienced that by inviting God in our life we grow in loving others more perfectly. That our hearts get stretched to be wider like the one of Jesus. The process of becoming like God is a slow process - our desire is to get to the point where we love God and others like Jesus does. Only then we will love unconditionally - without a condition to be loved back or to get something out of the person we love. 

St Ignatius said “ Our only desire and our one choice should be this: I want and I choose what better leads to God's deepening his life in me.”

Like the young man I met in the gym, we can only get to love unconditionally by choosing to have more God in our life.

YOU

The Lenten season will start next week with Ash Wednesday on the 5th of March. 

This is a great opportunity for all of us to challenge ourselves to love unconditionally - without desiring something back from that person. 

Start with the person close to you, your spouse, your parents, your friends. Notice how your heart responds, your feelings and the thoughts in your head. Bring those to Jesus. Was it easy or hard? What would you like Jesus to do for you? Ask Him! 

You will not be able to do it all the time. Not even Mother Teresa could. But if you can love unconditionally one time out of 50 your heart will grow and become more like Jesus’s one.

Notice also the times that you were not able to love unconditionally, where judgement filled your heart - bring that to Confession.

WE

Confession and receiving the Eucharist are two fundamental sacraments that allow our heart to be filled with the trinitarian love. 

While we would like to love like Jesus immediately, we know that the journey to divinization is slow and not a straight line. Be patient with yourself and lean on the sacraments.

As you line up to receive the Eucharist, pray that Jesus' body will start filling your heart with the Trinitarian Love - to love more and more unconditionally.