Marriage and the Lessons of Humility

It is almost impossible to criticize the modern attitude toward marriage in an original way.  Having noticed the "new normal" of a massive divorce rate, we have reacted along two general routes:  1) accept that marriage is no longer a sacred institution and just feel our way through, even if this process involves massive changes in our understanding of what marriage is and we lose what familial and social cohesion we still have along the way, and 2) fight to put the genie back in the bottle, so to speak, by demanding that a society that has lost its grip on the concept of "truth" go back to living like past generations anyway.

As you can tell from the way I have described them, I find neither route completely acceptable.  If I have anything to add to the conversation about marriage (again, this point is not new or original) it is that we must look at marriage on an individual basis rather than as something to be controlled in sweeping demographic manipulations.  This is where the lessons of humility come in.  We must look at marriage as an element of our identity, just as humility requires us to embrace the painful truth that we must own our sins.

It is legitimate to practice within a marriage.  We learn to be better spouses partly by making mistakes.  My wife of just over two years and I (mostly me, I think) are constantly finding ourselves making decisions as if we were still single.  It is easy to, for example, make a purchasing decision that doesn't take the other person or the goals of the family into account.  It is easy to decide on a schedule for the day that takes the other person's assent for granted.  These are places where we know that we must better live up to our identity as married persons.  There is a distinction between this kind of practice and the idea that the entire marriage can be "practice."  If you make a wreck of your first marriage (or your spouse makes a wreck of it), you do not have the ability to call the whole thing "practice."  [please insert your own sports-related metaphor for this concept here]

In recent days I have heard about some extreme challenges in the marriages of some friends.  Quite frankly, my imagination recoils from some of the possibilities that can and do happen within marriages when one partner makes what seems to be the ultimate wrong choice.  Still, the fact remains that in a true marriage severance always does permanent damage to the partners.  Pope Benedict has recently commented, "Marriage, as a union of faithful and indissoluble love, is based upon the grace that comes from the triune God, who in Christ loved us with a faithful love, even to the Cross. . . Today we ought to grasp the full truth of this statement, in contrast to the painful reality of many marriages which, unhappily, end badly." As we are all made complete by the love Christ displayed for us on the cross--to the point we amend our identity and call ourselves "Christians"--we must also look on the love we promise to offer in marriage as demanding (at least potentially) as much from ourselves.  If we don't go to that cross, we will lose something of ourselves--something that cannot be replaced.