Paying Attention To The Sky

Fr. Romano Guardini holds court on what for many is one of the most confounding of Jesus’ teachings – that concerning Christian marriage and virginity. Yet it follows in line with our most recent posts on the Cardinal virtue of temperance as exemplified by Mother Teresa and Dawn Eden’s writings on the chaste life.

 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell. “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
Matthew 2:27-32

We have already pointed out that Moses’ Law was not an expression of original divine will (as this was revealed to Abraham, or in Paradise), it is the expression of a new order of things given fallen humanity by God after the original order of faith and freedom has been made void

The disciples are aghast Perhaps they are reminded of Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard that it was said to the ancients, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’ But I say to you that anyone who even looks with lust at a woman has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5: 27) Then what a terrible bond marriage is. To be tied to one woman without hope of release, and the mere lustful glance at another already adultery. To this Jesus replies as he so often has. Not everyone can grasp this, but only he to whom understanding is given. It is another form of “He who has ears to hear, let him hear” (Matthew 11:15), and it means that what he has just said cannot be taken purely intellectually, humanly juristically, but can be understood and obeyed only with the help of faith and grace.

Then the thought continues there is an order of things for those to whom understanding is “given” that is even farther removed than marriage from the usual conception of the relationship between man and woman renunciation of all sexual intercourse. And that there be no misunderstanding, Jesus differentiates clearly between the involuntary celibate whom either man or nature has rendered physically unfit for marriage, and the voluntary celibate “for heaven’s sake.” There exists an order and form of existence in which, a person directs the entire strength of his love to God and his kingdom, returning through these to his fellow men. (There is still less about such love in the law-books — mystery even greater than that of marriage; let him understand who can!)

Both orders stem from the same root. Both uphold a great mystery in the face of mere nature. Both are greater than what the average intellect can grasp. Neither can be simply traced back to the senses, or to the heart, or to the law of human society; both are truly recognizable only through revelation, acceptable only through faith, realizable only with the aid of grace.

It is said that Christian marriage is well suited to the nature of man. This can be correctly, but also incorrectly interpreted. It is appropriate to human nature, certainly, but to that nature as it was when it still bore the clear stamp of divine will, when it was directed Godwards and permeated with his grace. To men and women living in Paradise it would have been natural that marriage, which is contracted in the freedom and love of hearts obedient to God, must be unique and perpetual. But for fallen man?  Is the life-long bond between two people today something we can accept as natural — not after long rationalizing, sober consideration of its ends and values, its physical and spiritual advantages, but spontaneously, in affirmation of our own experience?

Primarily, nature is drive: the ceaseless urge to preservation and multiplication of self. But man’s fallen nature has become divided, insubordinate, discordant, dishonest with its conscience, blind, violent, inconstant and perishable, and consequently these characteristics color the relationship of any two people founded on it. The heart too is “natural,” vouching only for what it knows: the evident, present moment — not for what lies buried deep in the subconscious or in the future. The great theme of world literature is that of the heart’s fickleness.

Is it then natural for a person, and possible on the basis of his own strength, to remain bound life-long to another in the face of changing events and circumstances of his own development and that of his marriage partner? The bond made in unredeemed freedom is apt to be loosened by that same freedom

And man’s conscience? His judgment, power of decision, loya1ty? Are they still honest and dependable? He who claims they are shutting his eyes to the truth. And even if it were true that moral liberty is enough to guarantee a moral bond, marriage is so much more than this! Its sense lies over and above the flow of instinct, the existence of something that comes from elsewhere: a unifying energy that is not only stable and “good,” but also eternal and holy. That two human beings after the advent of sin into the world, variable as they are, confused, ready to revolt against the grace in their hearts, receive this sacred unity into their conscience and will, that this bond maintains and transfigures their community of life in spite of all its human shortcomings and tragedy — this is not “natural” but conceivable only to him who has faith.

Assuredly, indissoluble marriage conforms to the most profound sense of nature, and in the final analysis, even with all the destruction and suffering it sometimes entails, is the only practicable form of marriage Even so, it is an over-simplification to call it “natural.” We only risk distorting its sacred sense, and degrading it to an ethical social institution.

On the other hand, marriage comprehended in light of faith and lived in grace becomes ‘natural’ in a much higher sense, as the fruit of grace, the harvest of faith. It is not beginning , but end of Christian effort, and must be formed by the same power as that behind virginity: renunciation made possible by faith. Christian marriage is constantly renewed by sacrifice. True, it fulfills and enriches the lives of both partners through fertility and a ripening of the personality beyond the limits possible for each individually; not only through the fullness and creativeness of the joint life, but a1so through the sacrifices necessary to weather the temptations of brute instinct, inconstancy, never-ending disappointments, moral crises, changes in fortune and the general demands of a common life.

Marriage is not only the fulfillment of the immediate love which brings a man and woman together, it is also the slow transfiguration of that love through the experiences of a common reality. Early love does not yet see this reality for the pull of the heart and senses bewitches it. Only gradually does reality establish itself, when eyes have been opened to the shortcomings and failures revealed by everyday life. He who can accept the other then, as he really is, in spite all disappointments, who can share the joys and plagues of daily life with him just as he has shared the great experience of early love, who can walk with him before God and with God’s strength, will achieve second love, the real mystery of marriage.

This is as far superior to first love as the mature person is to the child, as the self-conquering heart is to that which simply allows itself to be conquered. At the cost of much sacrifice and effort something great as come into being. Strength, profound loyalty and a stout heart are necessary to avoid the illusions of passion, cowardice, selfishness and violence. But how many long-married couples succeed in breaking through to this really triumphant love? We well understand why Jesus’ words about marriage pass on to the alternative virginity.

Here the quality of non-naturalness already present in marriage breaks out into the open.

Man is certainly not encouraged by nature to renounce his desire to love and be loved, to sacrifice his fecundity. Yet what Jesus means by virginity is not the mere uncomplaining acceptance of a physical handicap or the duress of harsh circumstance — that would be making valiant but scant virtue of necessity. Jesus means the voluntary renunciation of marriage, not out of weakness, or indifference, or for any philosophy of life, but solely “for heaven’s sake.” Once more precisely: not because any ‘religious duty’ commands it, but because is a unique opportunity of becoming the participant of an immeasurable love offered by God to anyone who desires to belong to him entirely. Today with psychology turning its beam upon the hidden root and background of all human behavior, it is necessary to mention something further.

One might object that Christian virginity was simply a transplanting of the object of affections, that often for very complex reasons a human being unable to attain his natural partner seeks him in the sphere of religion. In other words, that when he loves “God” or “heaven” he unconsciously means the person he has lost. Whether this is true (not only in falsely experienced isolated instances, or as the light accompaniment to the genuine religious motivation, but as the actual core of a man or woman’s virginity) that virginity is a terrible thing. Then the human is only being cheated of the most vital part of his existence, and is offering God a disposition that is dishonest and unclean. It is in this light that non-believers usually regard virginity; and there are certain aspects of Christian life which sometimes justify their attitude; however, the essence of genuine virginity is quite other.

What Christian virginity is cannot be deduced from our knowledge of man, but only from revelation. Christ says that it is possible for the human being to concentrate all his powers of love honestly, purely on God, for he is such that he can be loved with all the plenitude of life; that he can become everything, beginning and end, of man’s existence. Not as an Ersatz, not as a cloak for something else, nor as the object of a deflected human affection, but for his own sake. God is the sovereign Lover, he who loves and can be loved absolutely — indeed, in the last analysis, the only one who can be love without reserve. Doesn’t the experience of every loving heart, ever the richest and happiest, concede the impossibility of complete fulfillment?

Is it perhaps so, after all, that love cannot harness its entire force for any human need because no human is big enough to receive it; that it is impossible to embrace an earthly lover with perfect intimacy, because essentially he is always distant? Perhaps precisely through the never completely satisfactory experience of human love, man begins to sense the presence of another love, unrealizable on a merely earthly plane, to whom we not only can but must surrender our most intimate being — the love revealed by revelation. Here lies the secret of virginity. Compared with its tremendous mystery, all objections of psychology and ethics dwindle to pathetic presumption. This certainly does not mean that every individual is capable of realizing such love, and there is no fixed rule as to how it may be realized. “Not all can accept this teaching; but those to whom it has been given.” The passage is valid here in its strictest sense. Christian virginity is a special garden within the reservation of grace in nature as it exists in Christian marriage.

The power that has created both states of life is the power of Jesus Christ. Christian marriage, like Christian virginity, is not the product of sociological truth, however evident; nor of moral and personal strength, however valuable; nor of immediate, personal religiousness, however genuine. None of these even touches the essential. Both states are tenable only through the strength of Christ. Christian marriage is possible only when between the two “gathered together for my sake” is Christ “in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:18-20). He gives them the strength to bear and forbear, love, overcome, forgive “seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:22).

This same strength, and no abstract “heavenly kingdom,” makes virginity possible. Not “God” generally, but Christ and all that radiates from his specific person: the ineffable fulfillment of all our aspirations. There is no collective word for such wealth, neither ethos nor any other. The only word large enough to contain him is that by which he is called: Jesus Christ, living Son of God and supremely beautiful offspring of men, personification of life and love. Both Christian marriage and Christian virginity become incomprehensible the moment the Nazarene ceases to be their essence, their norm and their reality.