Luceat!

A recent Zenit article summarizing the Pope’s address to Cuba said, “On the subject of the pastoral care of marriage and the family, the Holy Father encouraged the prelates ‘to redouble their efforts so as to ensure that everyone, and especially the young, gains a better understanding of — and feels ever more attracted by — the beauty of the true values of marriage and the family.’”

At first glance, we may be tempted to ask our Holy Father what he means by ensuring that young adults feel “ever more attracted by” the sacrament of marriage. Isn’t marriage a natural vocation and desire of most human beings? However, on campus, I run across a mentality of fear and apprehension regarding marriage.
Several recurrent sources appear to spawn an unnatural hesitancy to embrace the beauty of marriage. First, many of our students come from broken homes or homes where there is frequent marital tension. Even if the students’ families exemplify unity, most of their friends’ families do not. In our success-driven culture, the question, “What if I fail in my vocation and we have to get a divorce?” is a real fear for today’s youth. Secondly, in general there is a lack of commitment in men and women at the college age. They will not usually express the problem concretely, but they feel that their freedom is taken away if they do not “leave all their options open.” This failure to commit firmly toward good activities, responsibilities, and relationships also permeates their vocational discernment. Too many student have been fed a false mentality of total independence and unrestricted liberality, and they view marriage as restricting, limiting, and stunting their personal choices and development. The Ephesians 5 ideal of servitude scares them instead of inspiring them to greater love. Finally, men and women are confused by the gender and gender-role ambiguity that popular media proclaims as a good. Women rarely see men who they could trust as a protector and provider of a family. Men rarely find women who demonstrate through their selflessness that they would be ready to gracefully manage a family and support a husband. This brief analysis does not even include all the harm that sexual immorality and promiscuity has done to the image of what man and woman could and should be for each other (by reflecting the Trinitarian gift of self through a committed relationship.)

All of that forms a pretty bleak picture, yet I believe that we can restore the icon of marriage in our broken and wounded world as Benedict XVI encourages us to do. His predecessor, John Paul II, gave us a profound gift in the Theology of the Body. If you have not yet studied it (or one of Christopher West’s helpful synopses), I exhort you to do so.  Secondly, I ask married couples to revivify your own relationships and then openly share the joy you find in your vocation with others.  Too often I hear media showing the “disgruntled married couple” and I see married men and women criticizing and complaining.  Let’s restore a culture of honor that shows the beauty that a mutually loving and selfless relationship can be.  For those of you who are not married, start your vocational preparation now.  I don’t mean that the guys have to be making $200,000/yr. and the women have to be domestic goddesses with their own show on Food Network.  I do think that through prayer and growth in virtue you can work with God to become the person that He will place in His timing into a specific and beautiful marriage or religious vocation.  Couples, I ask you to be “witnesses to hope” in the ways you carry out your discernment together.  Allow your relationship to be outward focused in service (and not selfish) and invest in your friendship in addition to cultivating your romantic sensitivity to the needs of your loved one.  Gradually develop a prayer life together so that you know before your wedding day if the man will be a spiritual leader and initiator in your relationship and if the woman knows how to balance prayer time with a busy schedule (as she will need to do with a family.)  Love each other in a pure and mutually supporting way that will inspire those around you to be unafraid to discern their vocation as well at the proper time.

Marriage is a beautiful sacrament and vocation.  I’m not an idealist who doesn’t understand that every marriage will have obstacles and trials.  But God does not put pure desires and hopes in our hearts to frustrate us.  He places them there so we may aspire to the greatness beyond our natural capabilities to which He calls us.  He lovingly challenges us not to be “overcome by evil but [to] overcome evil with good.”  Do not allow yourself to be discouraged by the broken examples that surround us, but rather commit yourself to restoring the image of marriage as it was meant to be in the beginning.