style="font-size:15px;"> Learning to love one another as God loves us means that husbands and wives must be willing to learn to do the same for one another. We must be willing to do this whether we feel like it or not, and whether our spouse deserves it or not. And we must be willing to do it for life, just as God loves us as long as he lives — that is, forever. Of course, even for Catholics, love includes all those things that help us feel good about each other — romance, along with cherishing, respect, and caretaking — but it goes far beyond this as well.
As part of this loving mission for husbands and wives to become everything God created them to be in this life, and to help each other get to heaven in the next, we must understand four qualities that distinguish God’s love for us, and we must agree (at least implicitly) to live those qualities as fully as possible in our relationships. In short, couples marrying in the Church must promise to love each other freely, totally, faithfully, and fruitfully.
Freely
God chooses to love us freely. No one makes him do it. He makes the commitment to love us of his own free will, and he willingly sticks to that commitment even when we behave in sinful, unlovable ways. He loves us without expecting us to do anything in return to “pay him back.”
In the same way, when you marry in the Church, you are promising to learn from the Church’s wisdom how to love each other freely, even when your spouse doesn’t deserve it and you don’t feel like it. You are promising to love your spouse even through those times when you get little or nothing back and even when your spouse really makes big mistakes. That’s not to say that if you are struggling to get your needs met in your marriage you don’t have a right to seek help. In fact, the Catholic idea that love means working for each other’s good means that if you are unhappy in your marriage you have the right to expect your partner to work through that with you, just like God works with us through the hard times in our relationship with him. Loving each other freely and without limits isn’t easy, and sometime we need to get help to figure out how to do it. Regardless, when promising to love each other freely, both of you are promising to be “all in” and willing to give yourselves to each other, even when doing so stretches you in surprising ways.
Totally
God loves us totally. He doesn’t hold anything back. He wants to give every single part of himself to us, and he wants us to give every part of ourselves back to him. He longs for us to be totally one with him (Jn 17:21). Indeed, the entire point of the Christian walk is ultimate union with God. (For more on this, see Greg’s book, Broken Gods: Hope, Healing, and the Seven Longings of the Human Heart).
Similarly, husbands and wives are called to love each other totally, with no reservations. It is tempting for husbands and wives to put limits on their love: “I won’t share this part of my life, my thoughts, my feelings, my dreams, my body, or myself with you.” Catholics understand this temptation as the result of the same sin that ruptured the union between God, man, and woman in the Garden of Eden at the dawn of creation. It may be natural to want to place these kinds of limits on our love for each other, but Catholic couples must view these limits as obstacles to be overcome, not as the expected state of affairs. God respects our limitations, but he expects us to transcend those limitations if they represent obstacles to his love. In the same way, couples can be respectful of each other’s brokenness and limitations, but they have every right to expect that they both will do everything they can to heal from that brokenness and overcome those limitations if they present any kind of obstacle to their marital love. It is this total gift of self that makes God’s love for us truly intimate and makes a marriage modeled after God’s love an “intimate partnership” (Gaudium et Spes, n. 48).
Faithfully
God loves us always and no matter what (Ps 100:5). God, who has the busiest schedule in the universe, never lets anything come between himself and his commitment to love you totally (Rom 8:31-39). He won’t ever abandon you so that he can go love someone else who is more lovable. He won’t let all the things he has to do stop him from giving you as much of him as you want or need. God’s love is indissoluble and never ending.
In the same way, a marriage founded on God’s love must be unbreakable (Mk 10:9). Even more than simply being able to count on our spouse never abandoning us, the faithfulness that characterizes marital love tells us that we have a right to expect that our spouse will not let other people, commitments, or obligations get in the way of loving us fully — and vice versa. Our spouse comes first and has a right to the best of us, not just the rest of us. Our marriage must be given priority, because it is our best chance to learn how to love as God loves, to become everything we were created to be, and receive the support we need to get to heaven.
It is true that, in a fallen world, other responsibilities and other relationships may sometimes compete with, or outright threaten, the primacy of the marriage, but Catholic couples understand this as an obstacle to be overcome, not something to accept. Catholic husbands and wives have a right to expect that their marriage will reflect the faithful character of God’s love, meaning that they will always work to place each other first and above all others.
Fruitfully
Because God is love, and love is the commitment to work for the good of another, God is always doing more, creating more, loving more (Gen 1-2). God’s doesn’t have to create — he doesn’t have to do anything — but he loves to create, and he loves to love that creation. At the same time he is creating, he is doing things to help his creation flourish (Lk 12:27). God doesn’t hoard all of his love to himself or to some small, select group. Love demands to be shared, so God looks for more and more ways to share his love with his creation. In all these ways, God’s love is fruitful.
Similarly, Catholic couples recognize that as wonderful as their love for each other is, it demands to be shared. They know that the more they share their love, the more it grows. So they do two things.
First, they welcome children as a gift from the Lord. They know that one of the most beautiful ways to celebrate their love for each other is to allow God to create another person out of that love, born to be a witness and visible sign of the power of the couple’s closeness and commitment to each other. The couple that is open to life is open to receiving everything each other has to give.
The second way the Catholic husband and wife exercise the fruitfulness of their love is by working to nurture not only their children but also each other and all of the people in their life so that everyone they come in contact with might come a little closer to being their best selves because of their influence. Catholic couples are committed to doing everything they can to help all with whom they are in a relationship to fulfill their potential as people of God. In this way, Catholic couples exercise their call to spiritual fatherhood and motherhood, as well as physical fatherhood and motherhood.
Your Mission
Imagine what a marriage that is committed to living out, in an authentic way, this ideal of free, total, faithful, and fruitful loving would look like. THAT is the kind of love that truly has the power to fill your hearts, change the world, and call others to Christ!
That said, the mission of living out the Catholic vision of marriage isn’t easy; and because of both sin and our fallen human nature, it doesn’t come naturally. In particular, there are two major enemies that will come against you as you strive to live this vision of a free, total, faithful, and fruitful love in your marriage every day — namely, addiction to comfort, and a game we call “Marital Chicken.”
Addiction to Comfort
In our experience, more than communication breakdowns, infidelity, abuse, or any other issue, the biggest problem facing marriage is that husbands and wives tend to love their comfort zones more
