Buckle up. We’re rapidly approaching wedding season. Before diving into the majesty of the supernatural, forgive me for offering a cynical, but data-based look at the purely natural.
Compared to years prior, sacramental marriage has become something like the apex of Cedar Point’s Millenium Force. The vast majority get on board without knowing their sacramental seatbelts. Most have already aced “Conjugality 101” with repeated theses of "Oops, I Did It Again." Once like metallic duct tape, their intimacy adhesion has been reduced to something like two fragmented pieces of paper trying to stay together in a maelstrom. (Today, on average, young men and women have had between four and eight sexual partners). For many couples, the only thing scarier than vows proclaiming “total self-gift,” “open to life,” and “forever” is realizing they might actually have to mean it. But such is often the price for peace with parents and grandparents, impelling many to overcome commitment phobia and hurl towards "I do" only to be quickly overshadowed by “I won’t.” Thus, merely natural marriage. Amusement. Leaving partners dizzy and disillusioned.
Cynical, I know. Painful, I know. But not nearly as painful as the experience of many who think, based upon nature alone, it will be different for them. As Cecil B. DeMille suggested, we can not so much break the moral law as be broken against it. Driving down the highway of relationships and marital life we can no more presume ourselves immune from the consequences of violating these laws than can we presume to hit the berms going 70 m.p.h. and not be damaged. The portrait of marriage by mere nature is a roller-coaster ride resting on the fragile scaffolding of two very imperfect people. As such, alone, it is destined for failure.
Now for the magnificent news: God destined us for so much more. With profound love, He entered humanity to make possible supernature. In the person of Jesus Christ, God has appointed and anointed us with the capacity to participate literally in His Divine Life. He gives husband, wife, and family the supreme mission of making Him, who is Love, known. Given this revelation, each of us has the occasion to either reject or receive; to live a life of misery or in the Majestic.
This brings to mind the best musical ever, Les Miserables. Did you ever wonder what it is about Victor Hugo’s masterpiece that has captivated over 130 million people in 53 different countries—people of every age, gender, ideology, religion, and ethnicity? Les Mis is profound and real, with the capacity to reach beyond our surface and into our depths. The story is not simply something we spectate, but at some level, Someone in Whom we all participate.
Woven of incredible transformation, redemption, and sacrifice, let’s draw into the story of extraordinary divine-human encounter, Hugo’s magnificent account of Marius and Cossette's wedding night, a poignant portrait of our appointing and anointing through marriage to participate in supernature:
There was tumult, then silence. The bride and groom disappeared. A bit after midnight, the Gillenormand house turned into a temple…. On the threshold of wedding nights, an angel stands, smiling, a finger to its lips. The soul enters into contemplation before this sanctuary where the celebration of love takes place.
There must be glimmers above houses like this one. The joy they contain must escape through the stones of the walls as light and dimly streak the darkness. This sacred and fateful celebration is simply bound to send a celestial shimmer into infinity. Love is the sublime crucible in which a man and a woman melt together; the one being, the triple being, the final being, the human trinity, the result. This birth of two souls in one must move deep night.
The lover is priest; the rapt virgin filled with fear. Something of this joy travels up to God. Wherever there is a real marriage, meaning where there is love, the ideal is involved.
A nuptial bed creates a pocket of dawn light in the darkness. If it were given to our eye of flesh and blood to see the fearsome and lovely sights of the higher life, we would probably see the forms of the night, winged strangers, the blue bystanders of the invisible, bend down, a throng of dark heads, over the luminous house, satisfied, blessing, pointing out to each other, sweetly alarmed, the virgin bride, and wearing the reflection of human bliss on their divine faces.
If at that supreme moment, the newlyweds, dazed with sensual rapture and believing themselves alone, were to listen, they would hear in their room the muted sound of fluttering wings. Perfect happiness implies the solidarity of angels. This little dark nook is overhung by the whole heavens. When two mouths, sanctified by love, come together to create, that ineffable kiss is simply bound to set the mysterious stars shuddering throughout immensity.
This is the real bliss. There is no joy beyond these joys. Love is the sole ecstasy here. Everything else weeps.
To love or to have loved is enough. Don’t ask for anything more. There is no other pearl to be found in the shadowy folds of life. To love is an achievement.