December 26, 2014
The Michigan bishops have urged us to consider 2015 the Year of Marriage. Why would the bishops speak of dedicating a year to the learning and loving that can be marriage? I’ve been pondering the question for some time, now, because I have been witnessing or presiding over many weddings in the past few months. I love it; love being a part of a couple’s growing love for one another; love doing what I can to make the wedding the centerpiece of that special day in which a man and woman proclaim their love for one another in a very public statement of their intentions – to be in a covenant love for the rest of their lives. I find it interesting that:
· Married men and women have been found to enjoy healthier, happier and longer lives than those who are not married.
· Married men and women are less likely to suffer from psychological illness.
· Married mothers tend to receive greater support, both emotionally and physically, which contributes to lower rates of depression than single or cohabitating mothers.
It is also interesting to find that marriage provides a certain financial stability to couples, for example:
· Married couples tend to be able to build up greater wealth than single or cohabitating couples.
· Married men earn between 10 and t20 percent more than single men with similar education and prior job experience.
You could say, well, that’s not fair. And that’s true. But the reality of the statistics shows that marriage does provide the benefits I’ve mentioned along with many more.
For many years, I’ve been preaching at weddings that what is taking place at the wedding is a covenant of love that the couple share with one another. So, I was delighted when I found this quote from Pope Francis. He spoke at a general audience on the Sacrament of Marriage at the Vatican on April 2 of this year: “This is the image of God: love, God’s covenant with us isrepresented in that covenant between man and woman. And this is very beautiful!”
It seems so simple, so important when the Holy Father speaks about marriage and reminds us that it is a covenant. Lawyers tell us it’s a contract. And for the state, that’s true. But for a loving couple, marriage is not a contract in which terms of negotiation are laid out – it is instead a covenant similar to God’s covenant with his people. That covenant was a covenant of love – a love that was totally loving and faithful. To the Hebrew people that love might best be described by the word “hesed.”
“Hesed” is difficult to translate because it stands for a cluster of ideas – love, mercy, grace, kindness all somehow wrapped up into one. But I like to think of hesed as a quality that moves a couple to think about their love for another and how to bring that love to their spouse without considering “what’s in it for me?” It will never be easy to have a marriage that is also a covenant of love. But it’s the kind of marriage worth fighting for, praying for, and working for. And yes, I do know many marriages that are profoundly happy because they live covenant love on a daily basis.