If I were a pastor of a parish, I would put in highlighted print on my parish bulletin each week the following from St. Thomas Aquinas, following St. Augustine and also cited by the Council of Trent:
God does not command the impossible and if it seems so, we do what we can and pray for his help (Council of Trent, DH 1536 & 1568; see St. Thomas, On Truth 24, 13).
When young couples become engaged and married, they need to realize that from many points of view, marriage has certain “impossibles” that will come their way, sometimes called “rough patches”, caused by many different trials interiorly and exteriorly. These trials make fidelity, indissolubility, openness to life and love, heavy burdens that prima facie are not “light”, in seeming contradiction to our Lord’s words who asks us to come to Him for His “yoke is easy.” This why the Code of Canon Law requires the following of the pastor:
528 §2. The pastor is to see to it that the Most Holy Eucharist is the center of the parish assembly of the faithful; he is to work to see to it that the Christian faithful are nourished through a devout celebration of the sacraments and especially that they frequently approach the sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist and the sacrament of penance; he is likewise to endeavor that they are brought to the practice of family prayer as well as to a knowing and active participation in the sacred liturgy….
Holiness is a battle over moral evil and the evil one, the temptor, which is why at the end of the Our Father, we beg God to “deliver us from evil. The Catechism interprets that to mean from the “evil one” (CCC 2850-54). Before one begins to intend a lifelong marriage, one needs to foresee the battlefield of the enemy within and without and the “tools” to fight and lest one try to overcome the difficulties of married life by sinful deeds.
At the heart of marriage, there has to be loving communication, compromise and above all sacrificial service to the other partner, as a friend and lover of one’s spouse and as father and mother of their offspring. These qualities can only be sustained by the grace of God, producing charity and humility and cooperating with these infused virtues in the daily grind. Otherwise, one becomes enslaved by pride fomenting or inspiring the other seven vices of the soul (vainglory, avarice or greed, envy, anger, gluttony, lust and acedia also called sloth). Weakened human nature on its own cannot, over the long haul of life, transcend itself because it lacks the moral assets to persevere in these qualities. Likewise, there lurks in the background of the human soul illusions of giving up a marriage when life becomes unbearable and find someone else to slake loneliness and sexual release. Therefore, a daily regime of prayer, along with the reception of the sacraments of Penance and Eucharist, gives us the assets to do battle with the self and the devil.
Some of the trials of the impossible waiting to happen in marriage are obvious, some subjective faults and failures, other heavy scourges from circumstances, which will be the subject of another essay. Subjectively, couples can be enslaved by narcissism whereby each partner thinks of the self as more important than the other, creating an atmosphere of false hurts, inability to communicate with tenderness, understanding, forgiveness. The spirit of infallibility looms large, making it seemingly impossible to have intelligent conversations and compromise in minor matters. This leads to contention, among other vices. Moreover, everything in the household becomes a challenge to one’s ego. Worse still is a certain masculine characteristic to dominate one’s partner, making for passive aggressive behavior from the other. Arguments become shouting matches instead of learning how to disagree without becoming disagreeable. Much of this is the effect of the vice of pride that can only be conquered or at least held in check by humility as a spirit of serving the other. Pride becomes the deeper root of envy, vainglory, and the other vices as it progresses further into one’s soul instead of divine and human love.
Further, instead of holy conjugal acts open to true bonding of the couple together with an openness to offspring, sex acts become purely recreation, and each uses or instrumentalizes the other. What this means is that instead of a self-giving act, it becomes sex for sex’s sake so that each person becomes an object of mere pleasure and satisfaction. As marital lust progresses instead of authentic and holy conjugal acts, it becomes a stepping stone to adultery, contraception, pornography and the like thereby killing off psychologically (not the sacramental bond) the loving bond of marriage which should be the root of happiness within the family. Also abandonment of one’s spouse becomes an easy temptation as each partner ages and loses much of their physical beauty. The temptation to find another younger and more vital person as a second partner seems to be “greener pasture’ of connubial bliss.
But there are other challenges that come the way of married people. When one of the couples becomes addicted to alcohol, gambling or drugs, the ability to feed and clothe children becomes threatened for the innocent partner. Often physical abuse emerges as a result. Another problem emerges when the main breadwinner loses his or her job and finances become minimal, leading to discouragement, the “blame-game,” and often failing to look for more work. Anger is often expressed to the innocent spouse and children as a means of assuaging frustration. Further, if a family was living a high standard of living and now lives in frugality, this too creates interpersonal tension. Often temporary and permanent separation may be the only solution for safety’s sake and sometimes alert the other that their behavior is gravely harmful because in their stupor they do not see it as such. This also leads to the temptation to find another more suitable partner in a second seeming marriage for the sake of the children.
These reflections are merely a small commentary on chapter four of Amoris laetitia, “Love in Marriage,” a deep reflection of Pope Francis on the challenges facing marital love, very similar to the heartaches facing priests and religious. Just teaching NFP as the only preparation for young engaged couples is not enough if they are to remain on their journey of love and the Pope has given a tremendous understanding of the terrain facing them so that they will not become blindsided when trials emerge.
Father Basil Cole, O.P. is currently a Professor of Moral and Spiritual Theology, Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception, at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. Father is also author of Music and Morals, The Hidden Enemies of the Priesthood and coauthor of Christian Totality; Theology of Consecrated Life. A native San Franciscan, Father has been a prior in the Western province of the Dominicans, a parish missionary and retreat master, and invited professor of moral and spiritual theology at the Angelicum in Rome.
