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Chapter 2

The Celebration of a Lifetime

The Two Become One

Weddings are a cause for celebration. Jesus himself showed what an occasion for joy weddings are when he performed his first miracle at the wedding feast at Cana, transforming jars of water into the choicest wine (Jn 2:1-12). We want to help you discover how you can celebrate your marriage and experience the incredible joy that comes from living the fullness of the Catholic vision of married love!

In the last chapter, we examined what made the Catholic vision of marriage special and unique among all the many different visions of love. Specifically, you discovered that Catholic couples promise to spend their lives learning how to love each other freely, totally, faithfully, and fruitfully. When a couple strives to live out this unique vision of love in their relationship, God blesses them in two special and important ways. First, he empowers them to celebrate an incredible Christian union — a miraculous degree of togetherness that melts two selves into one. Second, he empowers them to celebrate a life-giving love. Both of these blessings are cause for the couple to celebrate the gift of their marriage over the course of a lifetime!

Historically, these two blessings have been known as the “ends,” or goals, of marriage (i.e., the unitive and procreative ends), but they are more than duties married couples serve or jobs married couples do. Rather, they are gifts that married couples receive from God for learning to love each other freely, totally, faithfully, and fruitfully.

In this chapter, we’ll explore the ways God wants to give you the graces you need to celebrate an incredible Christian union. We’ll look at celebrating the second blessing, life-giving love, in Chapter 3.

Celebrating an Incredible Christian Union

We know that, in marriage, two become one (Mk 10:8). While that sounds pretty and poetic, this idea has practical significance for your marriage. There are two major ways to celebrate an incredible Christian union.

The first is by striving to rebuild the original unity of man and woman.

The second is to actively and intentionally work together to fulfill your identities in Christ. Let’s look at each of these.

Rebuilding the Original Unity of Man and Woman

It can sometimes feel like men and women are from two different planets — Mars and Venus, if you like. Some people even think that husbands and wives are so different that they should never expect to truly understand each other, much less be best friends. In this view, supposedly, women are communicative, sensitive, emotive, relational, nurturing, loving, and supportive. Men, on the other hand, like football.

And never the twain shall meet.

If this is true of our experience today — and sadly, for many, it is — then we need to remember that this is not the way God intended, or intends, it to be. In his Theology of the Body, St. John Paul the Great reminded us that before original sin entered the world, there was a perfect union and a deep, intimate connection between man and woman that was rooted in their mutual love for God and their desire to do his will. St. John Paul II referred to this state of intimate connection as the original unity of man and woman (St. John Paul II, 2006).

Illustrating this union, Genesis tells us that when God created woman, Adam said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen 2:23). Please note that Adam did not say — to quote My Fair Lady’s Professor Henry Higgins — “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?”

The estrangement and confusion present-day men and women experience around one another is a direct result of original sin. Clearly, it is not the way things ought to be. The “regrettable apple incident” was to men and women what the Tower of Babel was to the world.

Winning the “Battle” of the Sexes

The good news is that God, through marriage, gives us the grace we need to begin to restore the authentic partnership Adam and Eve experienced with each other, and to overcome the false differences that keep men and women at odds (as opposed to the authentic differences that facilitate partnership between men and women). These false differences constitute the tension between men and women that people refer to as the “Battle of the Sexes.” True, we post-fallen people can’t achieve the complete union that Adam and Eve experienced with each other and God (at least not this side of heaven). But through God’s grace and our good efforts, there is much we can do in this life to bridge the gap that exists between genders.

Theologically speaking, this is the grace underlying what is known as the “unitive end” of marriage. When a man and woman freely and completely give themselves to each other, they commit to spending their lives becoming fluent in each other’s “languages.” By doing this, men and women can learn to celebrate the deep level of friendship and understanding that is born of helping one another become fully human persons. By learning to love and serve one another more perfectly, day-by-day, they help each other develop the missing parts of themselves. “And the two shall become one” (Mt 19:5).

Of course, saying that God gives us the grace to overcome false, or invalid, differences between men and women is not to deny that there are real differences between the sexes. But the true differences between men and women are much more subtle and profound than the polarized, overly simplistic definitions to which many in our society cling (e.g., “Men are rational, and women are emotional”; “Men don’t do housework and don’t take care of small children, and women shouldn’t work out of the home,” etc.). As moral theologian William May explains in his book Marriage: The Rock on Which the Family Is Built, gender differences are supposed to be differences in “emphasis.”

Celebrating the True Differences Between Man and Woman

What does this mean? In the beginning, at the dawn of creation, God shared the same aspects of himself (i.e., the same sets of characteristics and virtues) with both male and female human beings. Remember, Genesis says, “male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27, emphasis ours). In other words, although men and women express their shared humanity in different and complementary ways, men and women have all qualities that make them both fully human and, therefore, completely understandable to each other — unlike those lions, tigers, and bears (oh, my!) that Adam was trying to chat up before Eve came along.

As St. John Paul II argued, the fact that Adam said of Eve, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen 2:23), dramatically shows that Eve — body, mind, and soul — was a being to whom Adam could relate completely. In Eve, Adam found a true helpmate, a partner who “got him” and whom he could “get” as well. At last! Someone made of the same essential biological, psychological, emotional, and spiritual stuff as himself! (Hip hip hooray!)

So, in the beginning, both men and women were given the ability to reason, emote, love, communicate, produce, set goals, nurture, and so on — all the qualities that made them a matched set of fully functioning and complete human persons. Likewise, both men and women were called to live out all of these qualities to the fullest. However, based on how God created their bodies, Adam and Eve had different styles of applying these qualities to everyday life. These complementary ways men and women live out all the qualities that make them human through the unique bodies God gave them are what we respectively call “masculinity” and “­femininity.”

Complementarity: The “Genius” of Men and Women

Although God makes both men and women fully capable of doing many, if not all, of the same things as each other — and all the things that make them fully functioning, emotional, spiritual, psychological, and relational human beings — when men and women work together to bring their masculine and feminine gifts (what St. John Paul II referred to as men and women’s respective “genius”) to bear on a particular task, they do a better job of revealing the fullness of the particular quality and representing that virtue as it exists in God’s own heart.

For instance, God is fully nurturing to us, his children (cf. Lk 11:13), and he enables both men and women to be fully nurturing in their own ways through the unique body he gave each of us. God ordained a woman’s body to be able to nurse her young, to nourish them with her body like he nourishes us with his Body in the Eucharist. And he made mom’s body round and soft and cuddly to give baby a safe, comforting place to rest. But even though men cannot lactate (much as their wives might wish otherwise at 3 a.m.), God still requires them to be abundantly present and active in the lives of their children, just as God, our Father, is present and active in our lives. And dads have their own nurturing “genius.” For instance, because of their superior upper-body strength, dads can lift their children up over their heads and toss them gently in the air (and even catch them!), much to their little ones’ delight! Because men have scratchy faces/beards, they can put their cheeks under babies’ chins and on their tummies and — Bzzzzzzzrrrrrbbbbrrt — tickle them in ways moms can’t, making their children giggle with affectionate joy (“Do it again, Daddy!”).

God gave both men and women the ability — their respective “genius” — to be fully nurturing and loving (and every other quality), each in their own way; but he ordained the sexes to express this nurturance in equally valuable yet different and complementary ways, so that, taken together, their children could experience a more complete example of the nurturance that God exhibits in his own heart for all of us. As St. John Paul II taught us, men and women must prayerfully contemplate and emphasize their bodies’ unique capabilities to first understand true masculinity and femininity. Then, we must use our masculinity and femininity as the prism through which we express our full humanity. By doing this together, men and women reflect God’s image and likeness more perfectly. They create a deeper union with each other and with God — a union that shines out as a powerful witness to the world of God’s own glory.

False Differences: Mars vs. Venus

As you read above, the pre-fallen Adam and Eve fully exhibited all the qualities God gave them, although they tended to emphasize these qualities differently. But after the fall of humankind, masculine and feminine “emphases” stopped being that and became whole other languages that — because as Augustine put it, “Sin makes you stupid” (well, he said, “Sin darkens the intellect,” but same difference) — men and women couldn’t speak and didn’t understand.

After the Fall, men and women staked out separate domains defined by the borders of their comfort zones and forbade each other from ever crossing the line — as if either ever would want to. This tragic estrangement continued throughout history, worsening and worsening until men and women began to feel as if they were born on two completely different planets and spoke two completely different languages (Martian and Venusian, if you like).

But God never intended for masculinity and femininity to be different languages, much less different planets. Rather, he intended that they should be complementary expressions of a shared humanity. The true, godly differences between men and women are the ones that enable them to work better together because of those differences, not stare at each other in frustrated confusion. Through marriage, God gives husbands and wives the grace necessary to begin to restore the original unity experienced by our first parents. God does not give us an insufficient grace, allowing us to merely hook up at the Interplanetary High School Prom (“This Year’s Theme: Counting Stars!”). Instead, God gives husbands and wives all the grace they need to transcend false differences, to discover that they were really earthlings all along, and to speak one language again: a language of joyful, mutual love and generous service, a language spoken into being by the Father, exemplified by the Son, and inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Celebrating Complementarity: Overcoming the False Differences

God gives us men and women the unifying grace we need to overcome the Battle of the Sexes, but we must be willing to do the work that grace empowers us to do. Unfortunately, too many Christian husbands and wives do not have complementary roles; instead, they have compensatory roles that inhibit their growth, both as human persons and as Christians. For example, certain wives never learn to do or become A, B, or C, because, as they put it, “That’s what my husband is for.” Similarly, certain husbands never learn to do or become X, Y, or Z because “That’s what my wife is for.” What such individuals forget is that they are passing up the chance God gives them to become the people he created them to be: competent, fully formed human beings, eager to challenge the limitations original sin placed upon their bodies, minds, spirits, and relationships. Sanctification is not just about overcoming spiritual obstacles; it is about overcoming physical, emotional, and psychological ones as well. Are you taking advantage of the marital grace God gives you to become fully human? Or are you hiding behind the sad and alienating excuse, “That’s just not what women [or men] are supposed to be”?

Such a statement is a cop-out unworthy of our Christian dignity. Men must be men like Jesus Christ is a man. And women must be women like the Virgin Mary or the Proverbs 31 wife is a woman. Only then will Christian husbands and wives be able to experience the truth of complementarity and the fullness of marital grace.

If you are a Christian married person, God is giving you the grace to do the work. In order to understand the specific work you must do, consider the following.

Exercise: Winning the Battle of the Sexes

The true, godly differences between men and women should be a catalyst, not an obstacle, for healthy intimacy and partnership. The following questions can help you have a better sense of how God wants your and your mate’s masculinity and femininity to be a blessing to each other.

Step One: Embrace Your Masculinity or Femininity

Prayerfully contemplate your body. What can you do with your body that your spouse simply cannot do, or do as well, with his or hers? This is God’s definition of masculinity and femininity. Emphasize these things in your life.

Step Two: Embrace Your Humanity

• What domestic jobs (e.g., cooking and housekeeping, taking care of the finances, nurturing and playing with the children, etc.) are you physically capable of doing but don’t do (or do extremely rarely) simply because you lack practice or don’t like doing them?

• What tasks do you require your mate to do for you, simply because you lack practice or don’t like doing them?

• What qualities (e.g., emotionality, rationality, communicativeness, affection, etc.) do you lack in your life, or excuse yourself for not having because “That’s not how women [or men] are supposed to be”?

Step Three: Embrace the Unity of Man and Woman

The tasks, domestic responsibilities, and personal qualities you listed above are exactly the areas you must develop in your life in order to become the human being God created you to be, in order to have a marriage based on complementarity and sanctification, instead of simple compensation or spiritual enabling. To develop these aspects of yourself is to participate fully in the grace God gives you through the unitive end of marriage. Do you have the guts to become the new Adam and new Eve on your block? As a Christian married couple, you are being called by God to nothing less. Will you accept his call?

An Incredible Christian Union, Part Two: A Shared Mission

So far, we’ve been looking at ways you can celebrate an uncommon Christian union in your marriage by working to restore the original unity between the sexes. But there is a second way every married couple can create an even deeper union. Recall that earlier in this chapter we said that the source of Adam and Eve’s unity before the Fall was their mutual love for God and their shared desire to do his will. In addition to winning the Battle of the Sexes, you can achieve greater intimacy and unity with your spouse by cultivating a shared mission that reflects your desire for God’s will to shine out in your lives together.

The Secret of a Divorce-Proof Marriage

Marriage researchers have discovered that couples who create a shared vision for their lives enjoy much happier and stable marriages (Gottman, 2011). For the Christian, this means that there is really only one reason for marrying that guarantees the lifelong happiness and relevance of a marriage, only one reason that even comes close to addressing the true meaning of a Christian marriage. More than love and companionship, the real function of a Christian marriage is for a husband and wife to help each other become the people God created them to be in this life and help get each other to heaven in the next.

God didn’t go to all the trouble of instituting the Sacrament of Matrimony just so that you could have a guaranteed date for bowling night. The real dignity of your Christian marriage comes from promising to spend every single day of your lives discovering and fulfilling your identities in Christ. In other words, marriage is a partnership in actualizing your Christian destiny.

Scripture tells us that “whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s” (Rom 14:8). Through marriage, God gives each one of us a sacred trust: to prepare our mate to spend eternity in heaven with him or her. This is what that nice-sounding phrase exhorting husbands and wives to “be Christ to one another” means. In essence, God says to every person who marries in the Church, “I am choosing you to play a central role in your partner’s sanctification. Your spouse may not make it without you. Be sure that he or she makes it with you.” All people who are married in the Church have the right to expect that their mate will be their best hope — second only to the saving grace of Jesus Christ and their own free will — of helping them become everything they were created to be in this life and get to heaven in the next.

This responsibility should not come as a huge surprise to you; after all, sanctification is the chief work of any sacrament. When you marry in the Church, you are not simply saying, “We love each other,” or “We’re best friends,” or even “We’re really hot for each other.” Of course, all of these things should be true. But even more importantly, when you marry in the Church, you are acknowledging that from now until the day you die, God has made you responsible (second only to the saving work of Jesus Christ and your partner’s free will) to see that your husband or wife becomes the person God created him or her to be. And you are acknowledging that you sincerely believe you have a better chance, with each other than without, of becoming all God intends you both to be. As one Protestant minister’s wife said to us, “Jesus saved me, but my husband has everything to do with what shape I’m in when I get there.” Amen, sister.

In His Image

So, what did God create you to be? How do you know what your identity in Christ is? The answer lies in the Scripture passage that tells us we are created in God’s image and likeness. We might not be able to identify God in a lineup. We don’t know the color of his skin and hair, or his weight, or the size of his nose — but we do know what he looks like. We “see” God every day in his compassion, mercy, justice, truth, love, creativity, wisdom, and so on. Being created in God’s image means that each of us is called to reflect those aspects of him, those virtues (love, truth, wisdom, justice, compassion, etc.), which he encoded in our DNA at conception (metaphorically speaking). As C. S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity, “[God] lends us a little of his reasoning powers and that is how we think: He puts a little of His love into us and that is how we love one another.”

Wade in the Water: Our Baptismal Identity

Baptism is the foundation of our Christian identity. When we were baptized, God gave us some incredible gifts. In addition to washing our souls clean of original sin, he infused us with sanctifying grace; gave us the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and love; bestowed upon us the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord); granted us moral virtues (e.g., prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude); and empowered us to bear the twelve fruits of the Holy Spirit (charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, and chastity). To have an identity in Christ is to live out these freely given virtues and qualities in the unique way the circumstances of our lives demand. You know you have the seeds of an identity if you can say that, between now and the day you die, you’d like to be known for these particular virtues, qualities, ideals, and beliefs. You know the strength of your identity by how much your daily life reflects the active pursuit of those virtues, qualities, ideals, and beliefs. If someone made a reality show of your life (Real Housewives — and Husbands — of Vatican City!), would viewers be able to tell what you stood for just by watching the choices you make, the priorities you set, and the way you live?

The more our daily choices and behaviors reflect these God-given values, virtues, dreams, and goals, the more solid our Christian identity. While each one of us is individually responsible to God for living out this identity, it is the job of a sacramental marriage to support, nurture, and encourage us in this pursuit.

“Pretty words,” you may comment. “But why should I care?”

“You … Complete Me”

Practically speaking, being partners in fulfilling your Christian identities means that when your spouse asks for more from you, you are obliged to give it, so that you can respond to God’s invitation — written on your spouse’s heart — to grow in ways you never would on your own. You respond to this invitation not necessarily because your spouse always deserves such generosity (we so seldom deserve to be loved), but because you have a responsibility to God to demonstrate that generosity. You may not feel like doing more romantic things for your mate, but through these gestures you participate in God’s plan for letting your partner know how special she is to God. You may fear the vulnerability you feel in lovemaking, but that vulnerability is the very thing you and your partner must learn to enjoy if you want to become open to God’s eternal love. Whenever you hold back in your married life, you prevent God from loving your mate the way he wants to love him — the way your mate needs to be loved. Remember, God requires you to be Christ to your spouse. When was the last time Christ refused you a sign of his affection? When did he ever refuse to share the comfort of his precious body with you? You may not have deserved it, and God may or may not have felt like doing it, but, oddly, these issues never came up.

And this is just the beginning. Do you encourage the creativity of your mate — as God does — or do you say, “Why would you want to do something silly like that?” Do you affirm the beauty of your husband or wife — as God does — or do you criticize your spouse and/or treat her or him with benign neglect? Do you seek to fulfill your partner’s dreams, goals, and needs — as God does — or do you cling to your own comfort, asking your spouse to be limited to what you deem acceptable or “reasonable”?

For the Christian, being a master of marital skills has little to do with being a good earthbound companion and everything to do with being a collaborator in God’s plan of salvation for you and your mate. If your spouse isn’t even worth a couple of flowers, a card, some good conversation, or some physical affection from you, how will your mate ever learn to accept the immense bounty of love that God has prepared for her in his heavenly kingdom?

Helping your mate get to heaven involves a great deal more than getting to church on Sunday and praying your Rosary. It involves all that — plus being the loving, attentive, generous spouse Christ would be if he were married to your partner. Have you ever really appreciated the importance of your role as a husband or wife in God’s plan? Grasping this importance is the essential first step of answering the call of the Church, “Families, become what you are” (Familiaris Consortio, n. 17).

Exercise: Creating Shared Meaning — Partners in Christ

At the beginning of this section, we mentioned research showing that couples who create shared meaning for their lives and marriage have much happier and more stable relationships than other couples who are less intentional about sharing a mission (VanderDrift and Lewandowsky, 2010; Gottman, 2011). The following exercise is intended to serve two needs. First, it will help you to clarify both your identity in Christ and what you must do to live out that identity more consistently in your life and marriage. Next, it will help you identify how to make your marriage a partnership in fulfilling that Christian destiny. In essence, by the end of this exercise, you will have developed a basic “mission statement” (or “marital imperative”) around which to build your life and marriage. Don’t expect to fulfill every part of that mission statement today. Rather, view it as a plan of action, an itinerary for what you will be working toward over the course of your lives together.

Part One: Your Christian Identity

Directions: Just like there are different religious orders (e.g., Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans, etc.), with each emphasizing a different mission or charism (teaching, preaching, hospitality, simplicity, etc.) that witnesses to another facet of God’s face to the world, God calls each family to be its own religious community (i.e., “domestic church,” cf. Lumen Gentium) that witnesses to his goodness through the qualities they live out in their household (generosity, faithfulness, hospitality, joy, etc.). Take some time to prayerfully meditate on the questions below. Do not share your answers with your mate at this time. This first part is about your identity in Christ, the identity that you would be responsible for living out, whether or not you were ever married.

1. Most of the virtues listed below were given to you freely and automatically at your baptism. Of them all, which virtues do you believe God has made dearest to your heart? Identify a few virtues that are most important to you. Use the list below, or write your own in the space provided. (If you have a hard time answering, try thinking of the qualities you wish to be most known for at the end of your life.)

2. Write the virtues you indicated in the form of a personal motto. (For example: “With God’s help, I will spend my life pursuing the following virtues: love, wisdom, and service.”) Now it’s your turn.

3b. When your spouse does these annoying things, how, specifically, will you change your behavior to more adequately reflect your chosen motto? (For example: “How can I respond more lovingly when my wife is late?”)

4. We all hold back from our mates. What do you hold back? How will God’s grace and the virtues you identified help you overcome this selfishness? How will you motivate yourself to give more generously to your mate?

5. What steps must you take so that your work life, parenting life, and personal life can more adequately reflect your personal motto? (For example: take a parenting class, go on a couples’ retreat, do more spiritual reading, go to daily Mass, get additional job training, etc.) What role would you like your spouse to play in helping you achieve these goals?

6. What goals or accomplishments do you believe God is asking you to pursue at this time in your life? (Think of those most heartfelt desires that you have dismissed as silly but somehow won’t go away.) What role would you like your spouse to play in helping you achieve these goals?

Part Two: Your Partnership

Directions: You and your mate should now share and discuss your answers to Part One. During this discussion, keep in mind that your mate has arrived at her answers to Part One through prayerful discernment. Her answers reflect her genuine beliefs about the identity God is making her responsible for fulfilling. This identity may involve things you don’t appreciate, think are silly, or don’t like; but God didn’t ask your opinion when he gave your mate this mission. He only demands that you be faithful to the promises you made in your marriage and help your partner fulfill her identity. Remember, your mate may not make it without you, but you are responsible to God to make certain she makes it with you.

Discuss: In order to become the partner God asks you to be to your mate, what specific actions must you take, what skills must you develop, or what choices must you make in your daily life? What must you do to increase your mate’s chances of fulfilling his identity in Christ?

Part Three: A Promise

Take turns pledging the following:

[Say your partner’s name] I genuinely respect the person you are, and the person God wants you to be. To that end, I promise that I will work to see the good in the things you value, especially when I don’t understand. I will never say that the dreams, goals, or values God has placed in your heart are silly or unworthy of my time and attention. I promise to be the most important influence in your life, second only to our Savior, Jesus Christ, because I love and honor who you are and who God is calling you to become. I promise that I will love you and support you with all of my life, all the days of my life. And I promise that with the Lord’s help, I will be your best hope for arriving, properly attired, at the heavenly banquet.

Conclusion

In this chapter, you discovered that the phrase “the two shall become one” is more than mere poetry. It is a promise. God wants to use your marriage to restore the unity that existed at the beginning of time between Adam and Eve, and to show the world that men and women are not meant to be enemies or mysteries to one another, but true, intimate helpmates for each other. Further, he wants to unite you in a mission that will bring his face to the world in ways only you and your spouse can, and to empower your marriage to be a blessing to everyone who encounters you. And by committing your lives to all of this, God plans to give you the grace each of you needs to help each other become everything you were created to be in this life and to enable each other to get to heaven in the next! Clearly, God is giving you a great deal to celebrate!

But wait! There’s more!

In the next chapter, we’ll explore the second blessing God wants to give you, a blessing that will be a cause for celebration for generations — literally — to come; the blessing that accompany a life-giving love.