Sue Devereux.
Sue Devereux
There is always a great sight in Spring. It is the newly-in-love couple wandering down the street sharing ‘that look of love’. We all smile and some of us remember fondly that heady time of our lives when a love relationship started heading into marriage. That time of dreaming of us – and us alone – sharing our lives forever.
But marriage is more than that. What we believe about the vocation of Christian marriage is a couple’s relationship is more than simply a choice for themselves, but a choice that involves a call from God. It is a call to build a lifelong, faithful partnership of love and life in a way that shows the world God lives among us in the ordinary and extraordinary events of our lives. The call comes through baptism and is deepened in marriage. The couple expresses their love through their sexual union, which brings them together in the closest intimacy and opens them to the gift of new life. They build not just a relationship but a home and a family and a place of welcome for others too.
Marriage reveals the Easter story. As it goes through cycles of romance, disillusionment, misery, and awakening to joy and new life, the marriage relationship mirrors the agony, death and resurrection of Jesus. This cycle a out over and over again in family life becomes a sign of the radical love God has for each of us.
‘Who am I?’ is a question asked by each of us throughout our lives as we make sense of the events of our life. Through the permanent, committed, fruitful relationship of marriage, our spouse reveals to us more fully who we are than any other relationship does. We bring to our relationship the hurts of our childhood, the things we are frightened of, the things that hurt us, the things we don’t like facing. In a destructive marriage these are deepened and made worse. In a life-giving marriage they are accepted, held lovingly and healed. In
marriage we discover who we are and who we are capable of becoming.
To see the young lovers in Spring always brings joy, but there is another sight we love – an old couple holding hands and smiling at each other. This touches us all deeply, because we know there has been a huge journey to get to this point.
We all want that kind of loving. One that lasts a lifetime and still brings joy.
Sue Devereux, Family Life Adviser, Archdiocese of Wellington Pastoral Services.